‘Then why did you take to reading it?’
‘Oh!’ cried the boy, ‘if you only did know how stupid and how miserable it has been! More than half myself gone, and Sophy always glum, and Lucy always plaguing, and Aunt Maria always being a torment, you would not wonder at one’s doing anything to forget it!’
‘Yes, but why do what you knew to be wrong?’
‘Nobody told me not.’
‘Disobedience to the spirit, then, if not to the letter. It was not the way to be happier, my poor boy, nor nearer to your brother and mother.’
‘Things didn’t use to be stupid when Ned was there!’ sobbed Gilbert, bursting into a fresh flood of tears.
‘Ah! Gilbert, I grieved most of all for you when first I heard your story, before I thought I should ever have anything to do with you,’ said Albinia, hanging over him fondly. ‘I always thought it must be so forlorn to be a twin left solitary. But it is sadder still than I knew, if grief has made you put yourself farther from him instead of nearer.’
‘I shall be good again now that I have you,’ said Gilbert, as he looked up into that sweet face.
‘And you will begin by making a free confession to your father, and giving up the book.’
‘I don’t see what I have to confess. He would be so angry, and he never told me not. Oh! I cannot tell him.’