obtaining is, that the more you have the more you want.

One day Pitt came, as he still often did, to read with the colonel;
more for the pleasure of the thing, and for the colonel's own sake,
than for any need still existing. He found the colonel alone. It was
afternoon of a warm day in August, and Esther had gone with Mrs. Barker
to get blackberries, and was not yet returned. The air came in faintly
through the open windows, a little hindered by the blinds which were
drawn to moderate the light.

'How do you do, sir, to-day?' the young man asked, coming in with
something of the moral effect of a breeze. 'This isn't the sort of
weather one would like for going on a forlorn-hope expedition.'

'In such an expedition it doesn't matter much what weather you have,'
said the colonel; 'and I do not think it matters much to me. I am much
the same in all weathers; only that I think I am failing gradually.
Gradually, but constantly.'

'You do not show it, colonel.'

'No, perhaps not; but I feel it.'

'You do not care about hearing me read to-day, perhaps?'

'Yes, I do; it distracts me; but first there is a word I want to say to
you, Pitt.'

He did not go on at once to say it, and the young man waited
respectfully. The colonel sighed, passed his hand over his brow once or
twice, sighed again.

'You are going to England, William?'

'They say so, sir. My father and mother seem to have set their minds on
it.'

'Quite right, too. There's no place in the world like Oxford or
Cambridge for a young man. Oxford or Cambridge,--which, William?'

'Oxford, sir, I believe.'

'Yes; that would suit your father's views best. How do you expect to
get there? Will you go this year?'

'Oh yes, sir; that seems to be the plan. My father is possessed with
the fear that I may grow to be not enough of an Englishman--or too much
of an American; I don't know which.'

'I think you will be a true Englishman. Yet, if you live here
permanently, you will have to be the other thing too. A man owes it to
the country of his adoption; and I think your father has no thought of
returning to England himself?'

'None at all, sir.'

'How will you go? You cannot take passage to England.'

'That can be managed easily enough. Probably I should take passage in a
ship bound for Lisbon; from there I could make my way somehow to
London.'

For, it may be mentioned, the time was the time of the last American
struggle with England, early in the century;