t what is
this new maternal care?"

"Poor Pet's illness--his serious illness. I am surprised that you have
not noticed it, Philippa; it seems so unkind of you."

"There can not be anything much amiss with him. I never saw any one eat
a better breakfast. What makes you fancy that the boy must be unwell?"

"It is no fancy. He must be very ill. Poor dear! I can not bear to think
of it. He has done no mischief for quite three days."

"Then he must indeed be at the point of death. Oh, if we could only keep
him always so, Eliza!"

"My dear sister, you will never understand him. He must have his little
playful ways. Would you like him to be a milksop?"

"Certainly not. But I should like him first to be a manly boy, and
then a boyish man. The Yordases always have been manly boys; instead of
puling, and puking, and picking this, that, and the other."

"The poor child can not help his health, Philippa. He never had the
Yordas constitution. He inherits his delicate system from his poor dear
gallant father."

Mrs. Carnaby wiped away a tear; and her sister (who never was hard to
her) spoke gently, and said there were many worse boys than he, and she
liked him for many good and brave points of character, and especially
for hating medicine.

"Philippa, you are right; he does hate medicine," the good mother
answered, with a soft, sad sigh; "and he kicked the last apothecary in
the stomach, when he made certain of its going down. But such things are
trifles, dear, in comparison with now. If he would only kick Jordas, or
Welldrum, or almost any one who would take it nicely, I should have some
hope that he was coming to himself. But to see him sit quiet is so truly
sad. He gets up a tree with his vast activity, and there he sits moping
by the hour, and gazing in one fixed direction. I am almost sure that
he has knocked his leg; but he flew into a fury when I wanted to examine
it; and when I made a poultice, there was Saracen devouring it; and the
nasty dog swallowed one of my lace handkerchiefs."

"Then surely you are unjust, Eliza, in lamenting all lack of mischief.
But I have noticed things as well as you. And yesterday I saw something
more portentous than anything you have told me. I came upon Lancelot
suddenly, in the last place where I should have looked for him. He was
positively in the library, and reading--reading a real book."

"A book, Phillppa! Oh, that settles everything. He must have gone
altogether out of his sa