“I will take no end of care of them,” said Mab; “but it seems a pity that you should leave them. Could you not take them with you?”
“If I were going to live with Mr. Marriott I wouldn’t mind asking leave,” said Ralph, “but there’s something about Sir Matthew—I don’t know what it is—but one can’t ask a favour of him. I’d far rather give up the rabbits.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Mab. “And by the bye Ralph, let me have your new address, you are to live with your guardian are you not?”
“They say Sir Matthew is not exactly my guardian. But father’s will was made many years ago and he was named as sole executor, and father wrote to him the day before he died asking him to see to me. Here comes the man to say your carriage is ready.”
“Very well,” said Mab. “And tell Mrs. Grice I will send over for the rabbits. Good-bye, dear old boy. Don’t forget us all.”
She stooped down, and for the first time in her life kissed him, and Ralph having watched at the gate till the carriage was out of sight, suddenly felt a horrible wave of desolation sweep over him, and knew that he could not keep up one minute longer. Running down the road he fled through the churchyard never stopping till he found himself in a lovely sheltered fir grove—his favourite nook in the whole park; and here, while the nightingales, and the cuckoos, and the thrushes sang joyously overhead, he threw himself down at full length on the slippery pine needles that covered the warm dry ground, and sobbed as though his heart would break. They had always called this particular nook the “Goodly Heritage,” because whenever friends had been brought to see it they had always said to the Rector: “Ah, Denmead, your lines are fallen in pleasant places.” Poor Ralph felt that this saying was no longer true, he thought that the pleasantness had forever vanished from his life, and the prospect of going forth into the world dependent for every penny upon a man whom he vaguely disliked was almost more than he could endure. The boy had a keenly sensitive artistic temperament, but luckily his father’s strenuous endeavours had taught him self-control; he did not long abandon himself to that passion of grief but pulled himself together and began to pace slowly through the grove crushing into his hand as he walked a rough hard fir-cone. And then gradually as he breathed the soft pine scented air, and watched the sunbeams streaking with light the dark fir trunks, and glorifying the silvery birch trees in a distant glade which sloped steeply down to a little murmuring brook, he realised that the past was his goodly heritage, his possession of which no man could rob him, and in thankfulness for the home which had been so happy for thirteen years he set his face bravely towards the dark future.
“Waterloo, first single, a child’s ticket,” said Sir Matthew Mactavish entering the booking-office an hour or two later.
“But I am thirteen,” said Ralph quickly.
“Then he must have a whole ticket,” said the official, and Sir Matthew frowned but was obliged to comply.
“You are so absurdly small,” he said glancing with annoyance at his charge as they passed out on to the platform, “you might very well have passed for under twelve.”