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CHAPTER XII.
NEW THOUGHTS AND WAYS—THE HEIRESS OF WYVERN COURT.
Spring again, and Oscar and his uncle had been out round the farm. The boy was somewhat spiritless and weary-looking; he could not be pronounced to be ill or really weak now, yet there was something wanting in him which ought to have been there, making him more atune to spring-time.
His face was not much the worse for its battering on the rocks. He was still a good-looking youth, as Mr. Barlow told him one day; to which Inna responded, as the boy was silent, that she was glad, because nice looks were nice. This made Oscar laugh at last, and remark that nice, as used in the sense she used it, was only a girl’s way of using it. Yet he could be grumpy still, though there was certainly a change for the better in him in that way.
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As for Inna, she had been like a little shadow about him all through the winter, sitting by him through the long, cold, snowy days in the dining-room, he on a couch by the fire, she on a footstool, reading to him, chatting, working out puzzles—she and he together—and heaping up the fire till it blazed again. Once they had an earnest talk of that which was always making Oscar’s heart heavy and his brow gloomy, of the time when he would have to take to the farming.
Thus Oscar was, in a way, prepared for what his uncle said to him after their walk round the farm that fine spring day.
“Oscar, do you know why I’ve taken you round the farm to-day?”
The boy had thrown himself listlessly on a couch near the fire.
“Yes, I suppose to remind me of what I’m to be,” returned he.
“Well, yes, you have guessed rightly; and, my boy, has it ever struck you that you’re not fitted for what you want to be?” asked Dr. Willett, doctor-like, going to the point at once, and so saving suffering.
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“Yes, I know I’m too big a coward for it; and I suppose other people know it as well.”