"See, I've got lots of shells," he said, "and several beautiful madrepores. You must have some of them. They'd had a wedding, too, and we had to eat some of the bride-cake, and drink their health, and—"
But Aleck's enumeration did not proceed further, for I think my father perceived how keenly I was feeling the contrast between his joyous excitement and my own very dreary heaviness of heart, and called to me to come to the study with him, and put away his riding whip. So I gladly turned away from my cousin, and followed my father to his room.
To some children, the study, library, or whatever other room is consecrated to the use of the head of the family, is a sort of dreadful and solemn place, generally closed to them, but opening from time to time as a court of justice, to which they are brought when their misdemeanours have exceeded usual bounds, and are considered to require severer measures than are within the province of the lesser authorities. Very alarming, in consequence, is the summons when it comes.
With me, however, the case was happily very different; the study was associated with countless hours of happy intercourse with a father whose very countenance was beaming with love. Times of reproof and punishment there had been also, but the returning happiness of forgiveness, the loving words of advice, the kind and constant sympathy, I never failed to find from him, made me look upon an invitation to his room as the best thing that could happen to me, whether I was happy or in trouble.
"My poor little Willie," he said, sitting down almost immediately, and drawing me towards himself; "have you been very sorrowful?"
I hid my face on his shoulder, and sobbed out that I was quite miserable.
"Have you thought what it is that has made your day so sad, Willie?" he asked, kindly.
"Yes, papa," I answered between my sobs; "I wasn't allowed to go to Stavemoor, and I was so unhappy in my own room all alone, and—and—I broke my bow just after I had finished making it—"
"But the beginning of all this unhappiness, Willie—quite the beginning?"
"Aleck's having the gray, papa," I said. "I think that was quite the beginning."