"I never minded your tandrums, knowing there was a good heart at the
bottom. I only wished I was not such a dry old fellow, and that you
could have been fonder of me. Perhaps you will understand me better some
day, and----" Here he stopped and cleared his throat, and said
"hir-rumph" once or twice, and then I felt a thin crackling bit of paper
underneath my palm. "It will buy you something useful, my dear," he
finished, getting up in a hurry. A five-pound note, and he had lost so
much money and had to do without so many comforts! Who can wonder that I
jumped up and gave him a penitent hug.
It was long before I slept that night, and my first waking thoughts the
next morning were hardly as pleasant as usual. A premonitory symptom of
homesickness seized me as I glanced round my little room in the dim,
winter light. Aunt Agatha had made it so pretty; but here a certain
suspicious moisture stole under my eyelids, and I gave myself a resolute
shake, and commenced my toilet in a business-like way that chased away
gloomy thoughts.
Never had the little dining-room looked more inviting than when I
entered it that morning.
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