I didn't see anything funny about this, but Phil and Nora began to laugh, and, sitting up, Felix said, smiling, "Why, I know you are, Jacqueminot; I never doubted it for a moment. And by and by, when Phil and I are staid old seniors, your turn will come,—we'll see to that." Then, looking round at us, he went on, speaking rapidly, excitedly: "At last it has come, and when I least expected it—when I had given up all hope. I can hardly believe it! Now I shall go in for the hardest sort of hard work, for I've great things to accomplish. Don't think I'm conceited, but I'm going to try for all the honours that a fellow can; and I'll get them, too—I'll get them; I must! I promised—her—" He broke off abruptly and turned away, then presently added in a lighter tone: "I must write to my twinnie to-night,—how delighted she will be! Oh, I tell you, you don't any of you know what this is to me!—but there, I can't talk of it. Let's have some fun. What shall we do to celebrate the occasion? Play something lively, Nora; we'll have a musicale."
He stood up, and as Nora ran to the piano and struck up a waltz, Phil caught Fee round the waist and danced off with him.
But before they had turned twice round, Fee was in a chair, holding on to his back, and laughing at Phil's grumbling protest. "I never was much on dancing, you know," he said. "Here, take Rosebud; he'll trip the light fantastic toe with you as long as you like."
So Phil finished the waltz with me, but I didn't enjoy it; Phil is so tall, and he grips a person so tight, that half the time my feet were clear off the floor and sticking straight out; and he went so fast that I got dizzy.
Well, we had a jolly evening. After the dance, Fee didn't move about very much, but he was just as funny and bright as he could be; Nora was nicer, too, than I've ever known her; and as for Phil, he was perfectly wild with good spirits. He danced,—alone when he couldn't get anybody for a partner,—and sang, and talked, and joked, and kept us in a roar of laughter until bedtime.
"Well," said Nora, as we stood together by the drawing-room door for a few minutes before going upstairs, "I thought this morning that this was going to be a black day,—one of the days when everything goes wrong,—and yet see how pleasantly it has ended."
"It has been a great day for me," said Fee, slowly. "I don't mind telling you people, now, that that disappointment in the fall took the heart and interest all out of my studies; but now"—he straightened himself up, and his voice rang out—"now I have hope again, and courage, and you'll see what I can do. Thanks don't express my feelings; I'm more than thankful to aunt Lindsay!"
"So 'm I," I piped up, and I meant that; I was beginning to feel better about it.
"Thankful, more thankful, most thankful," Phil said, pointing his finger at Nora, then at me, then at Felix; "and here am I, the 'thankfullest' of all."
There was a break in his voice that surprised us; and to cover it up, he began some more of his nonsense. "High time for us—the pater's little infants—to be a-bed," he said, laughing. "Come, Mr. Boffin, make your adieux and prepare to leave