150 Lurnaside Cottage.
ing and planning, until Tommy started up, ex-
claiming, “ There’s Master George callin’ on us out
of the window! Church must be loosed—who’d a
thought it? But come you on, Reuben, lad ; for
now I comes to think upon it, I are hungry.”
Perhaps I had caught a little cold on the beach,
or it was the natural result of the wind having gone
into the east, or of the languor that follows a time
of excitement, or I might unconsciously have
envied Tommy’s brighter and more stirring future ;
at any rate, I felt weak and low-spirited the next day,
and the trouble and anxiety about my father, which
had for a day or two lain dormant, came back upon
me with redoubled force. “If I had behaved better,
all this would not have happened ; if I had behaved
better, all this would not have happened”—this was
the thought which kept on beating into my brain,
monotonously as a tolling bell, shouldering out all
other thoughts, and robbing the words that I read
of their sense, before they reached my mind.
Master George, happily indifferent as to whether
the wind was east or west, had gone off with a
merry picnic party for the day; but my master,
whose chest was still delicate, was forced, like me,
to remainin. He had settled himself in his favourite
place near the window, where, when he looked up
from the papers and pamphlets which engaged him,