"I didn't think they could be leather after the first minute," I replied, doubtfully; "but I couldn't know—"
CHAPTER III.
A WHOLE HOLIDAY.
To what boy or girl does not the promise of a whole holiday convey a sort of Fortunatus' purse of anticipated enjoyment! I used to wonder—I remember wondering that very day after Aleck's arrival, when I had the most enjoyable whole holiday I ever spent—why grown-up people who always had them should seem so indifferent to their privileges, writing it down upon the secret tablets of my resolve, that when I grew up things should be very different with me.
My cousin and I sat side by side at the breakfast-table in a vehement impulse of boyish affection, so completely taken up with each other that I for one never remember noticing any one else during the progress of the meal, except when once I caught a wistful look from my aunt, and heard her saying, in a rather sorrowful low voice, to my mother,—
"I am very thankful to see our boys take to each other; it is quite a load off my mind that Aleck should be with you instead of being left at school."
"Won't Aleck come too?" I asked my mother, when she summoned me to our usual Bible-reading after breakfast.
"Not whilst his own mamma is here," was the answer; and I was obliged to rest content. But the moment I had put away my Bible, I flew off in search of him, eagerly explaining that we were to do what we liked for the whole of the morning, and sketching out a plan for our amusement such as I thought would be pleasant to him:—
"First, we must go over the whole house—you've only seen a little bit of it yet—and the kitchen-garden and the stables, and then down the Zig-zag to old George's, and we'll get him to go out with us in the boat. It's smooth enough to sail the 'Fair Alice'—that's a little yacht of mine that old George gave me."