being
"much better." And yet she had looked very ill that last evening. He
thought of it sometimes in the middle of the night, and started up in a
sort of agony of fright, feeling as if at all costs he must set off
there and then to see her--to know how she was. Often he did not fall
asleep again for hours, and then he would keep sobbing and crying out
from time to time, "Oh, mamma, mamma!" But there was no one to hear. And
with the morning all the proud, bitter feelings would come back again.
"They don't care for me. They are thankful to be rid of me;" and he
would picture his future life to himself, friendless and homeless, as if
he never had had either friends or home. Sometimes he planned that when
he grew older he would emigrate, and in a few years, after having made a
great fortune, he would come home again, a millionaire, and shower down
coals of fire in the shape of every sort of luxury upon the heads of his
unnatural family.

But these plans did not cheer him as they would have done some months
ago. His experiences had already made him more practical--he knew that
fortunes were not made nowadays in the Dick Whittington way--he was
learning to understand that not only are there but twenty shillings in a
pound, but, which concerned him more closely, that there are but twelve
pence in a shilling, and only thirty in half-a-crown! He saw with dismay
the increasing holes in his boots, and bargained hard with the village
cobbler to make him cheap a rough, strong pair, which he would never
have dreamt of looking at in the old days; he thanked Mrs. Eames more
humbly for the well-worn corduroy jacket she made down for him than he
had ever thanked his mother for the nice clothes which it had _not_
always been easy for her to procure for him. Yes, Geoff was certainly
learning some lessons.

[Illustration: SOBBING AND CRYING.]

Sundays were in one way the worst, for though he had less to do, he had
more time for thinking. He went twice to church, where he managed to sit
in a corner out of sight, so that if the tears did sometimes come into
his eyes at some familiar hymn or verse, no one could see. And no more
was said about the Sunday school, greatly to his relief, for he knew the
clergyman would have cross-questioned him. On Sunday afternoons he used
to saunter about the park and grounds of Crickwood Bolders. He liked it,
and yet it made him melancholy. The house was shut up, but it was easy
to see it was a dear old pl