“Every one of them,—the climbing the big cherry-tree the day the branch broke, and we both fell into the melon-bed; the hunting for eels under the stones in the river,—was n't that rare sport? and going out to sea in that leaky little boat that I 'd not have courage to cross the Thames in now!—oh, Tony, tell me, you never were so jolly since?”
“I don't think I was; and what's worse, Dolly, I doubt if I ever shall be.”
The tone of deep despondency of these words went to her heart, and her lip trembled, as she said,—
“Have you had any bad news of late? is there anything going wrong with you?”
“No, Dolly, nothing new, nothing strange, nothing beyond the fact that I have been staring at, though I did not see it three years back, that I am a great hulking idle dog, of no earthly use to himself or to anybody else. However, I have opened my eyes to it at last; and here I am, come to seek my fortune, as we used to say long ago, which, after all, seems a far nicer thing in a fairy book than when reduced to a fact.”
Dolly gave a little short cough, to cover a faint sigh which escaped her; for she, too, knew something about seeking her fortune, and that the search was not always a success.
“And what are you thinking of doing, Tony?” asked she, eagerly.
“Like all lazy good-for-nothings, I begin by begging; that is to say, I have been to a great man this morning who knew my father, to ask him to give me something,—to make me something.”
“A soldier, I suppose?”
“No; mother won't listen to that She 's so indignant about the way they treated my poor father about that good-service pension,—one of a race that has been pouring out their blood like water for three centuries back,—that she says she 'd not let me accept a commission if it were offered to me, without it came coupled with a full apology for the wrong done my father; and as I am too old for the navy, and too ignorant for most other things, it will push all the great man's ingenuity very close to find out the corner to suit me.”