ly; "is there nothing
vexatious in the world but _death_?"

"Yes," say I, laughing, despite myself, as my thoughts revert to my late
employment, "there are _puff-balls_!"--then, ashamed of having been
flippant, and afraid of having been unsympathetic, I add hastily: "I
wish you would tell me what it is! I am sure, _when I hear_, I shall be
vexed too; but you see as long as I do not know what it is, I cannot,
can I?"

"There is no time now," he says, glancing toward father, whose head
appears through the dining-room windows. "See! they are going to
breakfast!--afterward I will tell you--afterward--and child--" (putting
his hands on my shoulders, and essaying to look at me with an altogether
cheered and careless face,) "do not you worry your head about it!--eat
your breakfast with an easy mind; after all, it is nothing very bad!--it
could not be any thing _very_ bad, as long as--." He stops abruptly, and
adds hastily, "let us have a look at your mushrooms! well, you _have_ a
quantity!"

"Yes, have not I?" say I, triumphantly, "more than any of them, except
Tou Tou--." Then, not quite satisfied with the impression our late talk
has left upon me: "General!" say I, lowering my face and reddening, "I
hope you do not think that I am _quite_ a baby because I like childish
things--gathering mushrooms--running about with the boys--talking to
Jacky. I can understand serious things _too_, I assure you. I think I
could enter into your trouble--I think, if you gave me the chance, that
you would find that I could!"

Then a sort of idiotic false shame overtakes me, and without waiting for
his answer I disappear.

CHAPTER XVIII.

I meet Bobby retiring to the kitchen to cook his mushrooms himself. He
invites me to join him, but I refuse. It is the first time in the annals
of history that I was ever known to say no to such an offer. Bobby
regards me with reproachful anger, and makes a muffled remark, the drift
of which I understand to be that, though I may _pretend_ not to be, I
_am_ grown fine, as he always said I should. To-day it seems to me as if
breakfast would _never_ end. It is one of our fixed laws that no one
shall leave the table until father gives the signal by saying grace.
Sometimes, when he is in one of his unfortunate moods, he keeps us all
staring at our empty cups and platters for half an hour. To-day I watch
with warm anxiety the progress downward of the tea in his cup. At last
he has come to the grounds.