First Period First Narrative - Chapter III

"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 to-morrow 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 remember 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 lawyer's
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.