“A few outrageous-looking acts of giddiness that are so much grieved over, may not be half so bad as the hundreds of wandering thoughts that one forgets, because no one else can see them!” said Ethel.
Meanwhile, Harry and Mary were sitting twisted together into a sort of bundle, on the same footstool, by Margaret’s sofa. Harry had begged of her to hear him say the Catechism once more, and Mary had joined with him in the repetition. There was to be only one more Sunday at home. “And that!” he said, and sighed.
Margaret knew what he meant, for the Feast was to be spread for those newly admitted to share it. She only said a caressing word of affection.
“I wonder when I shall have another chance,” said Harry. “If we should get to Australia, or New Zealand—but then, perhaps, there would be no Confirmation going on, and I might be worse by that time.”
“Oh, you must not let that be!”
“Why, you see, if I can’t be good here, with all this going on, what shall I do among those fellows, away from all?”
“You will have one friend!”
“Mr. Ernescliffe! You are always thinking of him, Margaret; but perhaps he may not go, and if he should, a lieutenant cannot do much for a midshipman. No, I thought, when I was reading with my father, that somehow it might help me to do what it called putting away childish things—don’t you know? I might be able to be stronger and steadier, somehow. And then, if—if—you know, if I did tumble overboard, or anything of that sort, there is that about the—what they will go to next Sunday, being necessary to salvation.”
Harry laid down his head and cried; Margaret could not speak for tears; and Mary was incoherently protesting against any notion of his falling overboard.
“It is generally necessary, Harry,” Margaret said at last—“not in impossible cases.”