"Oh," exclaimed Lubin, half ready to cry, "what a stupid donkey I have been!"
"I wish," said the pitying Nelly, "that we were allowed to help each other more. Not that I have much furniture to spare, but how gladly would I give of that little!"
"That's impossible," sighed poor Lubin; "and even if you could stuff my empty cottage with a dozen or so of your facts, that would not hide the horrible DUNCE which Mr. Learning scrawled on my wall. To think of mother's seeing it! ugh! how dreadfully shocked she will be!" and Lubin gave his forehead an actual bang, as if to punish it for his own neglect.
"Well, Lubin dear," said Nelly in a soothing tone, "we may regret the mistakes of the past, but let them only make us more anxious to do more with our future hours. You will begin to work hard to-morrow, and carry away a good store from Arithmetic or General Knowledge."
"I believe the first thing that I should do," observed the rueful boy, "is to master that ladder of Spelling."
"True, you will never get on without that," said Nelly. "I daresay with patience and pains you will get a well-furnished house after all."
Poor Lubin looked only half comforted; but hearing a slow, feeble step, he hastened with Nelly to support Dick, and lead him to his comfortable arm-chair.
"So mother is coming to-day, and you are all going to meet her," said the pale boy, with a languid smile.
"You will wait and welcome her here, dear brother," said Nelly.
"No," replied Dick, with quiet sadness; "I will await her in my own poor cottage, it is there that she expects to see me. Will you kindly support me thither? I have just enough strength to cross the sward."