Brooding. 147

 

ing, looking as fresh and sweet as the egg which he
produced from the corner of some pocket, assuring
me that his own hen had laid it yesterday on
purpose for me.

I was not yet strong enough for the long morning
service, so while Mr. Hurst and Master George
were at church, Tommy and I sat on the beach and
watched the waves, and talked of our future plans.

“You were right, Tommy,’ I said. “You told
me something would turn up for me, only wait a
little ; and so it has, you see.”

“ That’s the way things has,” said Tommy, medi-
tatively. “ You looks on ahead, and you says, Oh, I
can’t go past there, there ain’t no opening, it’s down-
right impossible, except I blasts away that great
rock, and I can’t do that—not I. Bless you! when
you gets up to it, there goes the path, so plain and
easy as you could wish, only it winded a little bit so
as you couldn’t see it, like.”

“Ts that your experience, Tommy ?”

“Yes, sure ; how would I know else?” returned
Tommy, throwing a most successful duck-and-
drake. “Granny she’ve a cried a deal about me
going for a soldier, and I thought I'd a had to give
in; and then comes a letter from father: ‘Tommy he
is to come,’ he says, ‘and the money’s to go on to
granfer all the same.’ I tells granny Pll look her