Edward enjoyed our excursions as much as I did, for Hannaford knew how to play the kind of games that a boy of a year and a half enjoyed. Loved especially to be borne along astride Hannaford’s shoulders, then swung down with a great swooping when we reached the open rock.
At home he suffered under the thumb of his father. With Mr Macarthur there was no indulgence. No weakness was to be shown and no complaint made. None of that! was what Edward heard from his father, crisp and snappy like a whip, if he grizzled to be carried, or took a tumble. None of that, my boy!
Yet he loved his son, after his own fashion. Called him Ned, his own soft name for the lad. And I had seen him watching the child sleep, with a look on his face I never saw at other times, a kind of mournful tenderness.
Tenderness, because Mr Macarthur was no monster, but a creature like any other, for whom love of one’s children was as fundamental as breathing. Mournful, because, being sent away so young, he had never learned that a father could be as strict as required, while also being tender.
I surprised a softness, almost a pity, for this armoured man, when I watched him bending over the cot.