peting."

"What comfort can it be? I've not been the smallest use all this time.
When he was ill, I left him to Ernescliffe, and lay on the floor like
an ass; and if he were to ask me to touch his arm, I should be as bad
again. A fine thing for me to have talked all that arrogant stuff about
Richard! I hate the thought of it; and, as if to make arrows and barbs
of it, here's Richard making as much of this as if it was a double first
class! He afraid to be compared with me, indeed!"

"Norman, indeed, this is going too far. We can't be as useful as the
elder ones; and when you know how papa was vexed about Richard, you must
be glad to have pleased him."

"If I were he, it would only make me miss her more. I believe he only
makes much of me that he may not disappoint me."

"I don't think so. He is really glad, and the more because she would
have been so pleased. He said it would have been a happy day for her,
and there was more of the glad look than the sorry one. It was the
glistening look that comes when he is watching baby, or hearing Margaret
say pretty things to her. You see it is the first bright morning we have
had."

"Yes," said Norman; "perhaps it was, but I don't know. I thought half of
it was din."

"Oh, Norman!"

"And another thing, Ethel, I don't feel as if I had fairly earned it.
Forder or Cheviot ought to have had it. They are both more really good
scholars than I am, and have always been above me. There was nothing
I really knew better, except those historical questions that no one
reckoned on; and not living at home with their sisters and books, they
had no such chance, and it is very hard on them, and I don't like it."

"Well, but you really and truly beat them in everything."

"Ay, by chance. There were lots of places in construing, where I should
have broken down if I had happened to be set on in them; it was only a
wonder I did not in that chorus, for I had only looked at it twice; but
Everard asked me nothing but what I knew; and now and then I get into
a funny state, when nothing is too hard for me, and that was how it was
yesterday evening. Generally, I feel as dull as a post," said Norman,
yawning and stretching; "I could not make a nonsense hexameter this
minute, if I was to die for it."

"A sort of Berserkar fury!" said Ethel, "like that night you did the
coral-worm verses. It's very odd. Are you sure you are well, dear
Norman?"

To which he answered, with displeasure, that he was a