CHAPTER XIV.
When he passed the house the next day they were gone. The nursery windows were thrown open, and he fancied that the place wore a deserted look. The very streets seemed empty, and the glare of sunshine, whose heat increased with every hour, added to the air of desolateness he imagined.
"It is imagination," he said. "And the feeling will die away all the more quickly because I recognize the unreality of it. By to-morrow or the day after I shall have got over it."
And yet a week later, when he dropped in upon the professor, one sultry evening, to spend an hour with him, his old friend found cause for anxious inspection of him.
"What," he said, "the hot weather begins to tell on you already! You are not acclimatized yet,—that's it. You must spare yourself as much as possible. It doesn't promise well that you look fagged so soon. I should say you had not slept well."
"I don't sleep well," Tredennis answered.
"You are working too hard," said the professor; "that is it, perhaps."
"I am not working hard enough," replied Tredennis, with a slight knitting of the brows. "I wish I had more to do. Leisure does not agree with me."
"One must occupy one's self!" said the professor. He spoke half-absently, and yet with a touch of significance in his tone which—combined with the fact that he had heard the words before—caused Tredennis to glance at him quickly.
He smiled slightly, in answer to the glance.