“You know Schiller’s poem on it?” said Uncle Geoffrey.
“Yes, Henrietta has it in German.”
“Well, it is what I should especially recommend to your consideration.”
“I am afraid it will be long enough before I am able to go out on a dragon-killing expedition,” said Fred, with a weary helpless sigh.
“Fight the dragon at home, then, Freddy. Now is the time for—
‘The duty hardest to fulfil,
To learn to yield our own self-will.’”
“There is very little hasty pudding in the case,” said Fred, rather disconsolately, and at the same time rather drolly, and with a sort of resolution of this kind, “I will try then, I will not bother mamma, let that Carey serve me as he may. I will not make a fuss, if I can help it, unless he is very unreasonable indeed, and when I get well I will submit to be coddled in an exemplary manner; I only wonder when I shall feel up to anything again! O! what a nuisance it is to have this swimming head and aching knees, all by the fault of that Carey!”
Uncle Geoffrey said no more, for he thought a hint often was more useful than a lecture, even if Fred had been in a state for the latter, and besides he was in greater request than ever on this last evening, so much so that it seemed as if no one was going to spare him even to have half an hour’s talk with his wife. He did find the time for this at last, however, and his first question was, “What do you think of the little Bee?”
“I think with great hope, much more satisfactorily than I have been able to do for some time past,” was the answer.
“Poor child, she has felt it very deeply,” said he, “I have been grieved to have so little time to bestow on her.”