what happened, regularly day by day, beginning
with the day when we got the news that Mr.
Franklin Blake was expected on a visit to the
house. When you come to fix your memory
with a date in this way, it is wonderful what
your memory will pick up for you upon that
compulsion. The only difficulty is to fetch out
the dates, in the first place. This Penelope
offers to do for me by looking into her own
diary, which she was taught to keep when she
was at school, and which she has gone on
keeping ever since. In answer to an improvement
on this notion, devised by myself, namely, that
she should tell the story instead of me, out of
her own diary, Penelope observes, with a fierce
look and a red face, that her journal is for her
own private eye, and that no living creature
shall ever know what is in it but herself. When
I inquire what this means, Penelope says,
"Fiddlestick!" I say, Sweethearts.

Beginning, then, on Penelope's plan, I beg to
mention that I was specially called one Wednesday
morning into my lady's own sitting-room,
the date being the twenty-fourth of May,
eighteen hundred and forty-eight.

"Gabriel," says my lady, "here is news that
will surprise you. Franklin Blake has come back
from abroad. He has been staying with his
father in London, and he is coming to us
tomorrow to stop till next month, and keep
Rachel's birthday."

If I had had a hat in my hand, nothing but
respect would have prevented me from throwing
that hat up to the ceiling. I had not seen Mr.
Franklin since he was a boy, living along with
us in this house. He was, out of all sight (as I
remembered him), the nicest boy that ever spun
a top or broke a window. Miss Rachel, who
was present, and to whom I made that remark,
observed, in return, that she remembered him
as the most atrocious tyrant that ever tortured
a doll, and the hardest driver of an exhausted
little girl in string harness that England could
produce. "I burn with indignation, and I ache
with fatigue," was the way Miss Rachel summed
it up, "when I think of Franklin Blake."

Hearing what I now tell you, you will naturally
ask how it was that Mr. Franklin should
have passed all the years, from the time when
he was a boy to the time when he was a man,
out of his own country? I answer, because his
father had the misfortune to be next heir to a
Dukedom, and not to be able to prove it.

In two words, this was how the thing happened:

My lady's eldest sister married the celebrated
Mr. Blake—equally famous for his great riches,
and his great suit at law. How many years he
went on worrying the tribunals of his country
to turn out the Duke in possession, and to put
himself in the Duke's place—how many lawyers'
purses he filled to bursting, and how many otherwise
harmless people he set by the ears together
disputing whether he was right or wrong—is
more by a great deal than I can reckon up.
His wife died, and two of his three children
died, before the tribunals could make up their
minds to show him the door and take no more
of his money. When it was all over, and the
Duke in possession was left in possession, Mr.
Blake discovered that the only way of being
even with his country for the manner in which
it had treated him, was not to let his country
have the honour of educating his son. "How
can I trust my native institutions," was the
form in which he put it, "after the way in which
my native institutions have behaved to me?"
Add to this, that Mr. Blake disliked all boys,
his own included, and you will admit that it
could only end in one way. Master Franklin
was taken from us in England, and was sent to
institutions which his father could trust, in that
superior country, Germany; Mr. Blake himself,
you will observe, remaining snug in England, to
improve his fellow-countrymen in the Parliament
House, and to publish a statement on the subject
of the Duke in possession, which has remained
an unfinished statement from that day
to this.

There! Thank God, that's told! Neither
you nor I need trouble our heads any more
about Mr. Blake, senior. Leave him to the
Dukedom; and let you and I stick to the
Diamond.

The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin,
who was the innocent means of bringing that
unlucky jewel into the house.

Our nice boy didn't forget us after he went
abroad. He wrote every now and then;
sometimes to my lady, sometimes to Miss Rachel,
and sometimes to me. We had had a transaction
together, before he left, which consisted in
his borrowing of me a ball of string, a four-
bladed knife, and seven and sixpence in money
—the colour of which last I have not seen, and
never expect to see, again. His letters to me
chiefly related to borrowing more. I heard,
however, from my lady, how he got on abroad,
as he grew in years and stature. After he had
learnt what the institutions of Germany could
teach him, he gave the French a turn next, and
the Italians a turn after that. They made him
among them a sort of universal genius, as well
as I could understand it. He wrote a little;
he painted a little; he sang and played and
composed a little—borrowing, as I suspect, in
all these cases, just as he had borrowed from me.
His mother's fortune (seven hundred a year)
fell to him when he came of age, and ran through
him, as it might be through a sieve. The more
money he had, the more he wanted: there was
a hole in Mr. Franklin's pocket that nothing
would sew up. Wherever he went, the lively easy
way of him made him welcome. He lived here,
there, and everywhere; his address (as he used
to put it himself) being, "Post-office, Europe—
to be left till called for." Twice over, he made up
his mind to come back to England and see us;
and twice over (saving your presence), some
unmentionable woman stood in the way and
stopped him. His third attempt succeeded, as
you know already from what my lady told me.
On Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of May, we were
to see for the first time what our nice boy had
grown to be as a man. He came of good blood;
he had a high courage; and he was five-and-