he, with a changed tone, "you don't know Sir Roger; you don't know the
violence of his temper if he imagines himself what he calls outraged,
which sometimes means questioned. Take your hat and stick, and go seek
your fortune, in Heaven's name, if you must; but don't set out on your
life's journey with a curse or a kick, or possibly both. If I preach
patience, my dear boy, I have had to practise it too. Put up your traps
in your portmanteau; come down and take some dinner: we 'll start with
the night-train; and take my word for it, we 'll have a jolly ramble and
enjoy ourselves heartily. If I know anything of life, it is that there's
no such mistake in the world as hunting up annoyances. Let them find us
if they can, but let us never run after them."

"My heart is too heavy for such enjoyment as you talk of."

"It won't be so to-morrow, or, at all events, the day after. Come, stir
yourself now with your packing; a thought has just struck me that you
'll be very grateful to me for, when I tell it you."

"What is it?" asked I, half carelessly.

"You must ask with another guess-look in your eye if you expect me to
tell you."

"You could tell me nothing that would gladden me."

"Nor propose anything that you'd like?" asked he.

"Nor that, either," said I, despondingly.

"Oh, if that be the case, I give up my project; not that it was much of
a project, after all. What I was going to suggest was that instead
of dining here we should put our traps into a cab, and drive down to
Delorme's and have a pleasant little dinner there, in the garden;
it's quite close to the railroad, so that we could start at the last
whistle."

"That does sound pleasantly," said I; "there's nothing more irksome in
its way than hanging about a station waiting for departure."

"So, then, you agree?" cried he, with a malicious twinkle in his eye
that I affected not to understand.

"Yes," said I, indolently; "I see little against it; and if nothing
else, it saves me a leave-taking with Captain Hotham and Cleremont."

"By the way, you are not to ask to see Madame; your father reminded
me to tell you this. The doctors say she is not to be disturbed on any
account. What a chance that I did not forget this!"

Whether it was that I was too much concerned for my own misfortunes to
have a thought that was not selfish, or that another leave-taking that
loomed in the distance was uppermost in my thoughts, certain it is, I
felt this privation far less