‘Yes, Laura,’ he said, ‘he has thought, mind, and soul; he is no mere rattle.’
‘No indeed. Who could help seeing his superiority over Maurice?’
‘If only he does not pervert his gifts, and if it is not all talk. I don’t like such excess of openness about his feelings; it is too like talking for talking’s sake.’
‘Mamma says it in the transparency of youthfulness. You know he has never been at school; so his thoughts come out in security of sympathy, without fear of being laughed at. But it is very late. Good night.’
The frost turned to rain the next morning, and the torrents streamed against the window, seeming to have a kind of attraction for Philip and Guy, who stood watching them.
Guy wondered if the floods would be out at Redclyffe and his cousins were interested by his description of the sudden, angry rush of the mountain streams, eddying fiercely along, bearing with them tree and rock, while the valleys became lakes, and the little mounds islets; and the trees looked strangely out of proportion when only their branches were visible. ‘Oh! a great flood is famous fun,’ said he.
‘Surely,’ said Philip, ‘I have heard a legend of your being nearly drowned in some flood.
‘Yes,’ said Guy, ‘I had a tolerable ducking.’
‘Oh, tell us about it!’ said Amy.
‘Ay! I have a curiosity to hear a personal experience of drowning,’ said Charles. ‘Come, begin at the beginning.’