The loneliness and want of occupation hurt him more than it did
Eyebright, and when spring came, as at last it did, his spirits did
not revive as she had hoped they would. Farming was trying and
depressing work on Causey Island. The land was poor and rocky,--"out
of heart," as the saying is,--and Mr. Bright had neither the spirit
nor the money to bring it into condition. He missed his old occupation
and his old neighbors more than he had expected; he missed newspapers;
and a growing anxiety about the future, and about Eyebright,--who was
getting no schooling of any kind,--combined to depress him and give
him the feeling that he had dropped out of life, and there was no use
in trying to make things better.

It was certainly a disadvantage to Eyebright, at her age, to be taken
out of school; still life on the island was a schooling for all that,
and schooling of a very useful kind. History and geography are
excellent things, but no geography or history can take the place of
the lessons which Eyebright was now learning,--lessons in patience,
unselfishness, good-humor, and helpfulness. When she fought with her
own little discontents and vexations, and kept her face bright and
sunny for papa's sake, she was gaining more good than she could have
done from the longest chapter in the best school-book ever printed.
Not that the school-books are not desirable, too, or that Eyebright
did not miss them. After the first novelty of their new life was over,
she missed school very much,--not the fun of school only, but the
actual study itself. Her mind felt as they say teething dogs do, as if
it must have something to bite on. She tried the experiment of setting
herself lessons, but it did not succeed very well. There was no one to
explain the little difficulties that arose, and she grew puzzled and
confused, and lost the desire to go on.

Another thing which she missed very much was going to church. There
had never been either a church or a Sunday-school in Scrapplehead, and
the people who made any difference for Sunday made it by idling about,
which was almost worse than working. At first, Eyebright tried to
observe the day after a fashion, by learning a hymn and studying a
short Bible lesson, but such good habits drop off after a while, when
there is nothing and nobody to remind or help us, and little by little
she got out of the way of keeping it up, and sometimes quite forgot
that it was Sunday till afterward. Days were much alik