Kitabı oku: «The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain», sayfa 4

Oh, those tears! How they would swell up at each throb of the wounded heart, at each dismal foreboding of the desponding spirit. But she had no time for them! Leonard must not be left alone, with no one to cover him up with his wrappers.

The tears were strangled, the eyes indignantly dried. She ran out at the garden door. The sofa was empty! Had Henry come home and helped him in? She hurried on to the window; Leonard was alone in the drawing-room, resting breathlessly on an ottoman within the window.

'Dear Leonard! Why didn't you wait for me!'

'I thought I'd try what I could do. You see I am much stronger than we thought.' And he smiled cheerfully, as he helped himself by the furniture to another sofa. 'I say, Ave, do just give me the map—the one in Bradshaw will do. I want to find this place.'

'I don't think there is a Bradshaw,' said Averil, reluctantly.

'Oh yes, there is—behind the candlestick, on the study chimney-piece.'

'Very well—' There were more tears to be gulped down—and perhaps they kept her from finding the book.

'Where's the Bradshaw?'

'I didn't see it.'

'I tell you I know it was there. The left-hand candlestick, close to the letter-weight. I'll get it myself.'

He was heaving himself up, when Averil prevented him by hastening to a more real search, which speedily produced the book.

Eagerly Leonard unfolded the map, making her steady it for his shaking hand, and tracing the black toothed lines.

'There's Bridport—ten miles from there. Can you see the name, Ave?'

'No, it is not marked.'

'Never mind. I see where it is; and I can see it is a capital place; just in that little jag, with famous bathing. I wonder if they will stay long enough for me to learn to swim?'

'You are a good way from that as yet,' said poor Averil, her heart sinking lower and lower.

'Oh, I shall be well at once when I get away from here!'

'I hope so.'

'Why, Ave!' he cried, now first struck with her tone, 'don't you know I shall?'

'I don't know,' she said, from the soreness of her heart; 'but I can't tell how to trust you with strangers.'

'Strangers! You ungrateful child!' exclaimed Leonard, indignantly. 'Why, what have they been doing for you all this time?'

'I am sure Miss May, at least, never came near us till to-day.'

'I'm very glad of it! I'm sick of everything and everybody I have seen!'

Everybody! That was the climax! Averil just held her tongue; but she rushed to her own room, and wept bitterly and angrily. Sick of her after all her devotion! Leonard, the being she loved best in the world!

And Leonard, distressed and hurt at the reception of his natural expression of the weariness of seven weeks' sickness and sorrow, felt above all the want of his mother's ever-ready sympathy and soothing, and as if the whole world, here, there, and everywhere, would be an equally dreary waste. His moment of bright anticipation passed into heavy despondency, and turning his head from the light, he dropped asleep with a tear on his cheek.

When he awoke it was at the sound of movements in the room, slow and cautious, out of regard to his slumbers—and voices, likewise low—at least one was low, the other that whisper of the inaudibility of which Averil could not be disabused. He lay looking for a few moments through his eyelashes, before exerting himself to move. Averil, her face still showing signs of recent tears, sat in a low chair, a book in her lap, talking to her brother Henry.

Henry was of less robust frame than Leonard promised to be, and though on a smaller scale, was more symmetrically made, and had more regular features than either his brother or sister, but his eyes were merely quick lively black beads, without anything of the clear depths possessed by the others. His hair too was jet black, whereas theirs was a pale nut brown; and his whiskers, long and curling, so nearly met under his chin, as to betray a strong desire that the hirsute movement should extend to the medical profession. Always point-device in apparel, the dust on his boot did not prevent its perfect make from being apparent; and the entire sit of his black suit would have enabled a cursory glance to decide that it never came out of the same shop as Dr. May's.

'O, Henry!' were the words that he first heard distinctly.

'It will be much better for every one—himself and you included.'

'Yes, if—'

'If—nonsense. I tell you he will be quite well enough. See how well I am now, how fast I got on as soon as I took to tonics.—Ha, Leonard, old fellow! what, awake? What do you say to this plan of old May's?'

'It is very kind of him; and I should be very glad if I am well enough; but next week is very soon,' said Leonard, waking in the depression in which he had gone to sleep.

'Oh, next week! That is as good as next year in a matter like this, as May agreed with me, here, let us have your pulse. You have let him get low, Averil. A basin of good soup will put more heart into you, and you will feel ready for anything.'

'I have got on to-day, said Leonard, briskly raising himself, as though the cheerful voice had been cordial in itself.

'Of course you have, now that you have something to look forward to; and you will be in excellent hands; the very thing I wanted for you, though I could not see how to manage it. I am going to dress. I shall tell them to send in dinner; and if I am not down, I shall be in the nursery. You won't come in to dinner, Leonard?'

'No, said Leonard, with a shudder.

'I shall send you in some gravy soup, that you may thank me for. Ave never would order anything but boiled chickens for you, and forgets that other people ever want to eat. There will be a chance of making a housekeeper of her now.'

How selfish, thought Averil, to want to get rid of poor Leonard, that I may attend to his dinners. Yet Henry had spoken in perfect good-humour.

Henry came down with a little sister in each hand. They were his especial darlings; and with a touch of fatherly fondness, he tried to compensate to them for their sequestration from the drawing-room, the consequence of Averil not having established her authority enough to keep their spirits from growing too riotous for Leonard's weakness. Indeed, their chatter was Henry's sole enlivenment, for Averil was constantly making excursions to ask what her patient would eat, and watch its success; and but for his pleasure in the little girls popping about him, he would have had a meal as dull as it was unsettled. As soon as the strawberries were eaten, he walked out through the window with them clinging to him, and Averil returned to her post.

'Some music, Ave,' said Leonard, with an instinctive dread of her conversation.

She knew her voice was past singing, and began one of her most renowned instrumental pieces, which she could play as mechanically as a musical-box.

'Not that jingling airified thing!' cried Leonard, 'I want something quiet and refreshing. There's an evening hymn that the Mays have.'

'The Mays know nothing of music,' said Averil.

'Stay, this is it:' and he whistled a few bars.

'That old thing! Of course I know that. We had it every Sunday at Brighton.'

She began it, but her eyes were full of tears, partly because she hated herself for the irritation she had betrayed. She was a sound, good, honest-hearted girl; but among all the good things she had learned at Brighton, had not been numbered the art of ruling her own spirit.

CHAPTER IV

 
Griefs hidden in the mind like treasures,
Will turn with time to solemn pleasures.
 

On the Monday morning, the two convalescents shook hands in the waiting-room at the station, surveying each other rather curiously; while Ethel, trying to conquer her trepidation, gave manifold promises to Averil of care and correspondence.

Dr. Spencer acted escort, being far more serviceable on the railway than his untravelled friend, whose lame arm, heedless head, and aptitude for missing trains and mistaking luggage, made him a charge rather than an assistant. He was always happiest among his patients at home; and the world was still ill enough to employ him so fully, that Ethel hoped to be less missed than usual. Indeed, she believed that her absence would be good in teaching him Mary's full-grown worth, and Mary would be in the full glory of notability in the purification of the house.

The change was likewise for Dr. Spencer's good. He had almost broken down in the height of the labour, and still looked older and thinner for it; and after one night at Coombe, he was going to refresh himself by one of his discursive tours.

He was in high spirits, and the pink of courtesy; extremely flattered by the charge of Ethel, and making her the ostensible object of his attention, to the relief of the boys, who were glad to be spared the sense of prominent invalidism. The change was delightful to them. Aubrey was full of life and talk, and sat gazing from the window, as if the line from Stoneborough to Whitford presented a succession of novelties.

'What's that old place on the river there, with crow-stepped gables and steep roofs, like a Flemish picture?'

'Don't you know?' said Leonard, 'it is the Vintry mill, where my relative lives, that wants to make a dusty miller of me.'

'No fear of that, old fellow,' said Aubrey, regarding him in some dismay, 'you've got better things to grind at.'

'Ay, even if I don't get the Randall next time, I shall be sure of it another.'

'You'll have it next.'

'I don't know; here is a quarter clean gone, and the other fellows will have got before me.'

'Oh, but most of them have had a spell of fever!'

'Yes, but they have not had it so thoroughly,' said Leonard. 'My memory is not properly come back yet; and your father says I must not try it too soon.'

'That's always his way,' said Aubrey. 'He would not let Ethel so much as pack up my little Homer.'

Leonard's quick, furtive glance at Ethel was as if he suspected her of having been barely prevented from torturing him.

'Oh, it was not her doing,' said Aubrey, 'it was I! I thought Tom would find me gone back; and, you know, we must keep up together, Leonard, and be entered at St. John's at the same time.'

For Aubrey devoutly believed in Tom's college at Cambridge, which had recovered all Dr. May's allegiance.

The extra brightness was not of long duration. It was a very hot day, such as exactly suited the salamander nature of Dr. Spencer; but the carriage became like an oven. Aubrey curled himself up in a corner and went to sleep, but Leonard's look of oppressed resignation grieved Ethel, and the blue blinds made him look so livid, that she was always fancying him fainting, and then his shyness was dreadful—it was impossible to elicit from him anything but 'No, thank you.'

He did nearly faint when they left the train; and while Aubrey was eagerly devouring the produce of the refreshment room, had to lie on a bench under Dr. Spencer's charge, for Ethel's approach only brought on a dangerous spasm of politeness. How she should get on with him for a month, passed her imagination.

There was a fresher breeze when they drove out of the station, up a Dorset ridge of hill, steep, high, terraced and bleak; but it was slow climbing up, and every one was baked and wearied before the summit was gained, and the descent commenced. Even then, Ethel, sitting backwards, could only see height develop above height, all green, and scattered with sheep, or here and there an unfenced turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon, and now and then descending between steep chalk cuttings in slopes, down which the carriage slowly scrooped on its drag, leaving a broad blue-flecked trail. Dr. Spencer was asleep, hat off, and the wind lifting his snowy locks, and she wished the others were; but Aubrey lamented on the heat and the length, and Leonard leant back in his corner, past lamentation.

Down, down! The cuttings were becoming precipitous cliffs, the drag made dismal groans; Aubrey, after a great slip forward, looking injured, anchored himself, with his feet against the seat, by Ethel; and Dr. Spencer was effectually wakened by an involuntary forward plunge of his opposite neighbour. 'Can this be safe?' quoth Ethel; 'should not some of us get out?'

'Much you know of hills, you level landers!' was the answer; and just then they were met and passed by four horses dragging up a stage coach, after the fashion of a fly on a window-pane—a stage coach! delightful to the old-world eyes of Dr. Spencer, recalling a faint memory to Ethel, and presenting a perfect novelty to Aubrey.

Then came a sudden turn upon flat ground, and a short cry of wonder broke from Aubrey. Ethel was sensible of a strange salt weedy smell, new to her nostrils, but only saw the white-plastered, gray-roofed houses through which they were driving; but, with another turn, the buildings were only on one side—on the other there was a wondrous sense of openness, vastness, freshness—something level, gray, but dazzling; and before she could look again, the horses stopped, and close to her, under the beetling, weather-stained white cliff, was a low fence, and within it a verandah and a door, where stood Flora's maid, Barbara, in all her respectability.

Much wit had been expended by Aubrey on being left to the tender mercy of cruel Barbara Allen, in whom Ethel herself anticipated a tyrant; but at the moment she was invaluable. Every room was ready and inviting, and nothing but the low staircase between Leonard and the white bed, which was the only place fit for him; while for the rest, the table was speedily covered with tea and chickens; Abbotstoke eggs, inscribed with yesterday's date; and red mail-clad prawns, to prove to touch and taste that this was truly sea-side. The other senses knew it well: the open window let in the indescribable salt, fresh odour, and the entire view from it was shore and sea, there seemed nothing to hinder the tide from coming up the ridge of shingle, and rushing straight into the cottage; and the ear was constantly struck by the regular roll and dash of the waves. Aubrey, though with the appetite of recovery and sea-air combined, could not help pausing to listen, and, when his meal was over, leant back in his chair, listened again, and gave a sigh of content. 'It is one constant hush, hushaby,' he said; 'it would make one sleep pleasantly.'

His companions combined their advice to him so to use it; and in less than half an hour Ethel went to bid him good night, in the whitest of beds and cleanest of tiny chambers, where he looked the picture of sleepy satisfaction, when she opened his window, and admitted the swell and dash that fascinated his weary senses.

'My child is all right,' said Ethel, returning to Dr. Spencer; 'can you say the same of yours?'

'He must rest himself into the power of sleeping. I must say it was a bold experiment; but it will do very well, when he has got over the journey. He was doing no good at home.'

'I hope he will here.'

'Depend on it he will. And now what are you intending?'

'I am thirsting to see those waves near. Would it be against the manners and customs of sea-places for me to run down to them so late?'

'Sea-places have no manners and customs.'

Ethel tossed on her hat with a feeling of delight and freedom. 'Oh, are you coming, Dr. Spencer? I did not mean to drag you out. You had rather rest, and smoke.'

'This is rest,' he answered.

The next moment, the ridge of the shingle was passed, and Ethel's feet were sinking in the depth of pebbles, her cheeks freshened by the breeze, her lips salted by the spray tossed in by the wind from the wave crests. At the edge of the water she stood—as all others stand there—watching the heaving from far away come nearer, nearer, curl over in its pride of green glassy beauty, fall into foam, and draw back, making the pebbles crash their accompanying 'frsch.' The repetition, the peaceful majesty, the blue expanse, the straight horizon, so impressed her spirit as to rivet her eyes and chain her lips; and she receded step by step before the tide, unheeding anything else, not even perceiving her companion's eyes fixed on her, half curiously, half sadly.

'Well, Ethel,' at last he said.

'I never guessed it!' she said, with a gasp. 'No wonder Harry cannot bear to be away from it. Must we leave it?' as he moved back.

'Only to smooth ground,' said Dr. Spencer; 'it is too dark to stay here among the stones and crab-pots.'

The summer twilight was closing in; lights shining in the village under the cliffs, and looking mysterious on distant points of the coast; stars were shining forth in the pale blue sky, and the young moon shedding a silver rippled beam on the water.

'If papa were but here!' said Ethel, wakening from another gaze, and recollecting that she was not making herself agreeable.

'So you like the expedition?'

'The fit answer to that would be, "It is very pretty," as the Cockney said to Coleridge at Lodore.'

'So I have converted a Stoneborough fungus!'

'What! to say the sea is glorious? A grand conversion!'

'To find anything superior to Minster Street.'

'Ah, you are but half reclaimed! You are a living instance that there is no content unless one has begun life as a fungus.'

She was startled by his change of tone. 'True, Ethel. Content might have been won, if there had been resolution to begin without it.'

'I beg your pardon,' she faltered, 'I ought not to have said it. I forgot there was such a cause.'

'Cause—you know nothing about it.'

She was silent, distressed, dismayed, fearing that she had spoken wrongly, and had either mistaken or been misunderstood.

'Tell me, Ethel,' he presently said, 'what can you know of what made me a wanderer?'

'Only what papa told me.'

'He—he was the last person to know.'

'He told me,' said Ethel, hurrying it out in a fright, 'that you went away—out of generosity—not to interfere with his happiness.'

Then she felt as if she had done a shocking thing, and waited anxiously, while Dr. Spencer deliberately made a deep hole in the shingle with his stick. 'Well,' at last he said, 'I thought that matter was unknown to all men—above all to Dick!'

'It was only after you were gone, that he put things together and made it out.'

'Did—she—know?' said Dr. Spencer, with a long breath.

'I cannot tell,' said Ethel.

'And how or why did he tell you?' (rather hurt.)

'It was when first you came. I am sure no one else knows it. But he told me because he could not help it; he was so sorry for you.'

They walked the whole length of the parade, and had turned before Dr. Spencer spoke again; and then he said, 'It is strange! My one vision was of walking on the sea-shore with her; and that just doing so with you should have brought up the whole as fresh as five-and-thirty years ago!'

'I wish I was more like her,' said Ethel.

No more was wanting to make him launch into the descriptions, dear to a daughter's heart, of her mother in her sweet serious bloom of young womanhood, giving new embellishments to the character already so closely enshrined in his hearer's heart, the more valuable that the stream of treasured recollection flowed on in partial oblivion of the person to whom it was addressed, or, at least, that she was the child of his rival; for, from the portrait of the quiet bright maiden, he passed to the sufferings that his own reserved nature had undergone from his friend's outspoken enthusiasm. The professor's visible preference for the youth of secure prospects, had not so much discouraged as stung him; and in a moment of irritation at the professor's treatment, and the exulting hopes of his unconscious friend, he had sworn to himself, that the first involuntary token of regard from the young lady towards one or the other, should decide him whether to win name and position for her sake, or to carry his slighted passion to the utmost parts of the earth, and never again see her face.

'Ethel,' he said, stopping short, 'never threaten Providence—above all, never keep the threat.'

Ethel scarcely durst speak, in her anxiety to know what cast the die, though with all Dr. Spencer's charms, she could not but pity the delusion that could have made him hope to be preferred to her father—above all, by her mother. Nor could she clearly understand from him what had dispelled his hopes. Something it was that took place at the picnic on Arthur's Seat, of which she had previously heard as a period of untold bliss. That something, still left in vague mystery, had sealed the fate of the two friends.

'And so,' said Dr. Spencer, 'I took the first foreign appointment that offered. And my poor father, who had spent his utmost on me, and had been disappointed in all his sons, was most of all disappointed in me. I held myself bound to abide by my rash vow; loathed tame English life without her, and I left him to neglect in his age.'

'You could not have known or expected!' exclaimed Ethel.

'What right had I to expect anything else? It was only myself that I thought of. I pacified him by talk of travelling, and extending my experience, and silenced my conscience by intending to return when ordinary life should have become tolerable to me—a time that never has come. At last, in the height of that pestilential season in India, came a letter, warning me that my brother's widow had got the mastery over my poor father, and was cruelly abusing it, so that only my return could deliver him. It was when hundreds were perishing, and I the only medical man near; when to have left my post would have been both disgraceful and murderous. Then I was laid low myself; and while I was conquering the effects of cholera, came tidings that made it nothing to me whether they or I conquered. This,' and he touched one of his white curling locks, 'was not done by mere bodily exertion or ailment.'

'You would have been too late any way,' said Ethel.

'No, not if I had gone immediately. I might have got him out of that woman's hands, and made his life happy for years. There was the sting, but the crime had been long before. You know the rest. I had no health to remain, no heart to come home; and then came vagrancy indeed. I drifted wherever restlessness or impulse took me, till all my working years were over, and till the day when the sight of your father's wedding-ring showed me that I should not break my mad word by accepting the only welcome that any creature gave me.'

'And, oh! surely you have been comforted by him?'

'Comforted! Cut to the heart would be truer. One moment, I could only look at him as having borne off my treasure to destroy it; but then there rose on me his loving, patient, heartbroken humility and cheerfulness; and I saw such a character, such a course, as showed me how much better he had deserved her, and filled me with shame at having ever less esteemed him. And through all, there was the same dear Dick May, that never, since the day we first met at the pump in the school court, had I been able to help loving with all my heart—the only being that was glad to see me again. When he begged me to stay and watch over your sister, what could I do but remain while she lived?'

'So he bound you down! Oh, you know how we thank you! no, you can't, nor what you have been to him, and to all of us, through the worst of our sad days. And though it was a sacrifice, I do not think it was bad for you.'

'No, Ethel. When you implored me to give up my Crimean notion, to spare your father pain, I did feel for once that you at least thought me of value to some one.'

'I cannot bear you to speak so,' cried Ethel. 'You to talk of having been of no use!'

'No honest man of principle and education can be utterly useless; but when, three days ago, I recollected that it was my sixtieth birthday, I looked back, and saw nothing but desultory broken efforts, and restless changes. Your father told me, when I thought him unaware of the meaning of his words, that if I had missed many joys, I had missed many sorrows; but I had taken the way to make my one sorrow a greater burden than his many.'

'But you do not grieve for my mother still?' said Ethel, anxiously. 'Even his grief is a grave joy to him now; and one is always told that such things, as it was with you, are but a very small part of a man's life.'

'I am not one of the five hundred men, whom any one of five hundred women might have equally pleased,' said Dr. Spencer; 'but it is so far true, that the positive pain and envy wore out, and would not have interfered with my after life, but for my own folly. No, Ethel; it was not the loss of her that embittered and threw away my existence; it was my own rash vow, and its headstrong fulfilment, which has left me no right to your father's peaceful spirit.'

'How little we guessed!' said Ethel. 'So cheerful and ready as you always are.'

'I never trouble others, he said abruptly. 'Neither man nor woman ever heard a word of all this; and you would not have heard it now, but for that sea; and you have got your mother's voice, and some of her ways, since you have grown older and more sedate.'

'Oh, I am so glad!' said Ethel, who had been led to view her likeness to her father as natural, that to her mother as acquired.

Those were the last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, and constantly the beat of the waves repeated to her the half-comprehended words, 'Never threaten Providence.'

After superintending Aubrey's first bath, and duly installing the vice-M. D. and her charges, Dr. Spencer departed; and Ethel was launched on an unknown ocean, as pilot to an untried crew. She had been told to regard Leonard's bashfulness as a rare grace; but it was very inconvenient to have the boy wretchedly drooping, and owning nothing amiss, apparently unacquainted with any English words, except 'Thank you' and 'No, thank you.' Indeed, she doubted whether the shyness were genuine, for stories were afloat of behaviour at Stoneborough parties which savoured of audacity, and she vainly consulted Aubrey whether the cause of his discomfiture were her age or her youth, her tutorship or her plain face. Even Aubrey could not elicit any like or dislike, wish or complaint; and shrugging up his shoulders, decided that it was of no use to bother about it; Leonard would come to his senses in time. He was passive when taken out walking, submissive when planted on a three-cornered camp-stool that expanded from a gouty walking-stick, but seemed so inadequately perched, and made so forlorn a spectacle, that they were forced to put him indoors out of the glare of sea and sky, and hoping that he would condescend to the sofa when Ethel was out of sight.

Punctilio broke down the next morning; and in the midst of breakfast, he was forced to lie down, and allow Ethel to bathe his face with vinegar and water; while she repented of the 'make-the-best-of-it' letter of the yesterday, and sent Aubrey out on a secret commission of inquiry about medical men, in case of need. Aubrey was perfectly well, and in such a state of desultory enjoyment and sea-side active idleness, that he was quite off her mind, only enlivening her morning of nursing by his exits and entrances, to tell of fresh discoveries, or incidents wonderful to the inland mind.

After dinner, which had driven Leonard to lie on his bed, Aubrey persuaded his sister to come to see his greatest prize; a quaint old local naturalist, a seafaring man, with a cottage crammed with pans of live wonders of the deep in water, and shelves of extinct ones, 'done up in stane pies,' not a creature, by sea or land, that had haunted Coombe for a few million of ages, seemed to have escaped him. Such sea-side sojourns as the present, are the prime moments for coquetries with the lighter branches of natural science, and the brother and sister had agreed to avail themselves of the geological facilities of their position, the fascinations of Hugh Miller's autobiography having entirely gained them during Aubrey's convalescence. Ethel tore herself away from the discussion of localities with the old man, who was guide as well as philosopher, boatman as well as naturalist, and returned to her patient, whom she found less feverish, though sadly low and languid.

'I wish I knew what to do for you,' she said, sitting down by him. 'What would your sister do for you?'

'Nothing,' he wearily said, 'I mean, a great deal too much.' The tone so recalled Norman's dejected hopelessness, that she could not help tenderly laying her cold hands on the hot brow, and saying, 'Yes, I know how little one can do as a sister—and the mockery it is to think that one place can ever be taken!'

The brown eyes looked at her with moist earnestness that she could hardly bear, but closed with a look of relief and soothing, as she held her hand on his forehead. Presently, however, he said, 'Don't let me keep you in.'

'I have been out, thank you. I am so glad to try to do anything for you.'

'Thank you. What o'clock is it, please? Ah, then I ought to take that draught! I forgot it in the morning.'

He permitted her to fetch it and pour it out, but as she recognized a powerful tonic, she exclaimed, 'Is this what you are taking? May it not make you feverish?'

'No doubt it does,' he said, lying down again; 'it was only Henry—'

'What! did not my father know of it?'

'Of course he does not, as it seems to be poison.'

'Not exactly that,' said Ethel; 'but I was surprised, for it was talked of for Aubrey; but they said it wanted watching.'

'Just like Henry,' observed Leonard.

'Well,' said Ethel, repressing her indignation, 'I am glad, at least, to find a possible cause for your bad night. We shall see you refreshed to-morrow, and not wishing yourself at home.'

'Don't think that I wish that. Home is gone for ever.'

'Home may be gone higher—up to the real Home,' said Ethel, blushing with the effort at the hint, and coming down to earthlier consolations, 'but even the fragments will grow into home again here, and you will feel very differently.'