“I can’t have you working again yet.”
“I needn’t begin with mending,—though I do really mean to make myself like that. But I could wash up, and make the beds.”
“Not just yet,” I repeated,—“more than you do already.”
“And that is so little,” she said.
I think it was the evening of the same day, that Jack came in with a grave face. After tea, he took a seat beside me, and fidgeted in silence with my scissors for a quarter of an hour or more. Then he said suddenly—
“Mother, I’ve had a warning to-day.”
“What, more blunders, Jack?”
“Yes. And the very next, I’ll have to give up. They are very sorry, but they say it really can’t go on.”
“O Jack!” I said sorrowfully.
“I wish I could help myself, mother! But what on earth am I to do? Sometimes I think I’ll run away and enlist.”