up the road for? And just this evening, too, when one would
have thought you would we have cared for poor Mother and Alfred,' said
she, crying.
'Why, what's the matter now?' said Harold.
'Oh, they've been saying he can't live out the winter,' said Ellen,
shedding the tears that had been kept back all this time, and broke out
now with double force, in her grief for one brother and vexation with the
other.
But next winter seemed a great way off to Harold, and he was put out
besides, so he did not seem shocked, especially as he was reproached with
not feeling what he did not know; so all he did was to say angrily, 'And
how was I to know that?'
'Of course you don't know anything, going scampering over the country
with the worst lot you can find, away from church and all, not caring for
anything! Poor Mother! she never thought one of her lads would come to
that!'
'Plenty does so, without never such a fuss,' said Harold. 'Why, what
harm is there in eating a few cherries?'
There would be very little pleasure or use in knowing what a wrangling
went on all the time Mrs. King was up-stairs putting Alfred to bed. Ellen
had all the right on her side, but she did not use it wisely; she was
very unhappy, and much displeased with Harold, and so she had it all out
in a fretful manner that made him more cross and less feeling than was
his nature.
There was something he did feel, however--and that was his mother's pale,
worn, sorrowful face, when she came down-stairs and hushed Ellen, but did
not speak to him. They took down the books, read their chapter, and she
read prayers very low, and not quite steadily. He would have liked very
much to have told her he felt sorry, but he was too proud to do so after
having shewn Ellen he was above caring for such nonsense.
So they all went to bed, Harold on a little landing at the top of the
stairs; but--whether it was from the pounds of merry-stones he had
swallowed, or the talk he had had with his sister--he could not go to
sleep, and lay tossing and tumbling about, thinking it very odd he had
not heeded more what Ellen had said when he first came in, and the notion
dawning on him more and more, that day after day would come and make
Alfred worse, and that by the time summer came again he should be alone.
Who could have said it? Why had not he asked? What could he have been
thinking about? It should not be true! A sort of frenzy to speak to
some one, and hear the real
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