"Everything's wrong! I'm utterly miserable!"
"I'm sorry," Gilbert said, looking as though he meant it. "Can I help you? Mr. Willis is away, I know, so you can't go to him!"
"No one can help me," Gerald declared, his face so full of unhappiness that the other's heart was touched with compassion; "it would be no good if father was at home, because I couldn't tell him what's bothering me."
This sounded serious. Gilbert's countenance was very grave as he wondered what Gerald had done that he could not tell his father. It must be something very bad, he feared.
The lame boy hesitated a few minutes, a flush spreading slowly over his face; then he said in a low tone, with a visible effort—
"Look here! I don't want to preach to you; but if you've done something wrong that you don't like to tell your father, don't forget there's One who knows all about it—it's no secret to God! I'd ask Him to help me, if I were you."
Having given this advice, he swung himself away on his crutches, whilst Gerald stared after him in astonishment, feeling he had been a little unjust in his dislike of Gilbert Mickle, who evidently was his well-wisher at heart.
[CHAPTER XXV]
An Alarming Experience
THE warm July evening was drawing in; heavy clouds were rising in the west, leaden in hue, portending a storm; and scarcely a breath of air stirred the leaves on the branches of the beech trees which completely overshadowed the narrow lane along which Dora and Gilbert Mickle were making their homeward way, the former's arms laden with bulrushes which she and her brother had obtained from a pond at a short distance from Wreyford for their mother, who had expressed a desire for some wherewith to decorate an ugly corner in the staircase.