“Yes, Gabriel, yours—be quick!” adjured Hilary.
He grasped the spoon and stirred the pudding vigorously, with an odd, far-away look on his intent face.
“Well,” asked his companions, “what did you wish?”
“Oh, that,” said Gabriel, colouring as he slipped down from the table—“that’s my secret.”
And neither Durdle’s cajoling nor Hilary’s earnest entreaties could make him say another word about the matter.
Before long, moreover, Hilary was summoned to her mother’s room, and Gabriel ran home through the garden, pausing for one last look at the snow monument by the south walk.
“I wish to be like you,” he whispered to the effigy of Sir John Eliot; “I wish to give my life for the country’s freedom.” Then, without a thought of what his wish might involve, he ran cheerfully home along the frosty paths singing a snatch of the old Bosbury carol:
“Oh! praise the Lord with one accord,
All you that present be;
For Christ, God’s Son, has brought pardon