"What a jolly little muff Everett is!" was his brother Dick's
contingent.

"Innocent little fellow!" said one.

"Happy little visionary!" sighed another.

And Everett grew in years and stature, and still unconsciously
maintained the same character. It is true that he was a quiet, sensitive
boy, with an almost feminine affectionateness and tenderness of
heart,--and that keen, exquisite appreciation both of the joyful and the
painful, which is a feminine characteristic, too. Yet he was far enough
from being effeminate. He was thoughtful, naturally, yet he could be
active and take pleasure in action. He was always ready to work, and
feared neither hardship nor fatigue. When the great flood came and
caused such terror and distress in the village, no one, not even Dick,
home from Sandhurst for the midsummer holidays, was more energetic or
worked harder or more effectually than Everett. And the boys (his
brother's chums at Hazlewood) never forgot the day when Everett found
them ill-treating a little dog; how he rescued it from them,
single-handed, and knocked down young Brooke, who attacked him both with
insults and blows. Dick, not ill-pleased, was looking on. He never
called his brother a "sop" from that day, but praised him and patronized
him considerably for a good while after, and began, as he said, "to have
hopes of him."

But the two brothers never had much in common, and were, indeed, little
thrown together. Everett was educated at home; he was not strong, and
was naturally his mother's darling, and she persuaded his father and
herself that a public school would be harmful to him. So he studied the
classics with the clergyman of the parish, and the lighter details of
learning with his sister. Between that sister and himself there was a
strong attachment, though she, too, was of widely differing temperament
and disposition. Agnes was two years older than he,--and overflowing
with saucy life, energy, and activity. She liked to run wild about the
woods near their house, or to gallop over the country on her pony,--to
go scrambling in the hedges for blackberries, or among the copses for
nuts. The still contentment that Everett found in reading,--his
thoughtful enjoyment of landscape, or sunset, or flower,--all this might
have been incomprehensible to her, only that she loved her dreamy
brother so well. Love lends faith, and faith makes many things clear;
and Agnes learned to understand, and would wait patiently bes