At length Harry raised his head.
“Please tell us,” he said brokenly; “when was it?”
Then Lieutenant Wilde told, as gently and quietly as he could, and pausing, now and then, until the fresh wave of boyish grief had spent itself, and he could go on with his sad story.
There was but little to tell, for in the hurry and confusion of their sudden grief, the letter was short. During the early part of the evening before, Mr. Arnold had seemed to be unusually bright and full of fun. At about nine o’clock, he had gone into the library to write to the boys; and he had been away from the room for more than two hours, before they wondered at his absence. Then Mrs. Arnold went in to speak to him, only to find that he had left them, never to come back to his pleasant earthly home. He sat there, leaning back in his chair, as one fallen asleep, with a quiet smile on his genial face which had so rarely known a frown. Under his hand, still stretched out upon the table before him, was a sheet of paper, on which he had written,—
“My dear boys,—Only a week before you come back to your old daddy again, but Leon’s letter, with its good news of his promotion and of your seeing Captain Curtis, makes me write to you once more. Captain Curtis is a good man, and if either of you could be as true a soldier as he, I would gladly give my consent, though I had never thought of that life for my sons. We were all delighted over the news from Leon; in fact, your daddy is thoroughly proud of both of his boys wh—”
Then the nerveless fingers had relaxed their hold, and the pen had dropped. Mr. Arnold’s last thought on earth had been given to his boys.
CHAPTER XV.
ON THE LAKE.
The opening of the summer term found the Arnolds back in their old places at Flemming, for it had seemed best not to interrupt their school life, much as Mrs. Arnold longed to have them with her. She was not the woman to sacrifice to her own inclinations the best good of her children, and not even Harry’s entreaties to be allowed to stay with her and Dorothy, had moved her from her original plan. Moreover the boys were too young, she felt, to have their lives saddened by the constant sight of her grief, so with the unselfishness of the true mother, she gave them up once more, to go back to their happy school life among the New Hampshire hills.
And the change was good for them. The past three weeks had worn upon them both, and they needed the association with their old comrades to rouse them from their sorrow. At home, everything had suggested to them their loss; their father’s easy chair, his favorite books, even the very walls of the rooms seemed to speak of him and of his absence. Once back at Hilton, it was different. It was not that either Harry or Leon forgot their father or mourned for him any the less; but the reaction had come, as it naturally would do, and the fresh every-day interests crowded into their lives and, in a measure, replaced the one absorbing thought of their trouble.