"A little before my father came in."
"My darling," she said,—"you will be true to Florence; will you not?" Then there was a pause. "My own Harry, tell me that you will be true where your truth is due."
"I will, mother," he said.
"My own boy; my darling boy; my own true gentleman!" Harry felt that he did not deserve the praise; but praise undeserved, though it may be satire in disguise, is often very useful.
CHAPTER XXXV.
PARTING.
On the next day Harry was not better, but the doctor still said that there was no cause for alarm. He was suffering from a low fever, and his sister had better be kept out of his room. He would not sleep, and was restless, and it might be some time before he could return to London.
Early in the day the rector came into his son's bedroom, and told him and his mother, who was there, the news which he had just heard from the great house. "Hugh has come home," he said, "and is going out yachting for the rest of the summer. They are going to Norway in Jack Stuart's yacht. Archie is going with them." Now Archie was known to be a great man in a yacht, cognizant of ropes, well up in booms and spars, very intimate with bolts, and one to whose hands a tiller came as naturally as did the saddle of a steeple-chase horse to the legs of his friend Doodles. "They are going to fish," said the rector.
"But Jack Stuart's yacht is only a river-boat,—or just big enough for Cowes harbour, but nothing more," said Harry, roused in his bed to some excitement by the news.