“Come, boys; come, boys,” said Mr Inglis at last; “this will never do; partings must follow meetings, and all holidays must have an end. I am sorry that your cousin must leave you; but I feel glad to see that he leaves us with regret, for that seems to say that he has enjoyed his trip. Is it not so, Fred? You have enjoyed your visit, I hope?”
“Oh! so much, Uncle,” said Fred; “only it has been such a short one, and it makes me so cross to think that I didn’t want to come.”
Mr Inglis smiled, and said, “But you will want to come another time, I hope?”
“Oh! may I? may I come again?” burst out Fred, with eyes sparkling, and half rising from his chair.
“I shall be only too happy to see you again, my boy; but what say Harry and Philip. Have they asked you to come again?”
“We did not ask him,” said Philip; “but Fred knows we want him to come again.”
“I don’t want him to go now,” said Harry, with his mouth full of cake. “Do, Papa, write and ask for another week’s holiday for him!”
“But you go back to school yourselves the day after to-morrow,” said Mr Inglis; “and what would you do then? No, my boys, depend upon it the real secret of enjoyment is to leave off when you have had enough; and nothing is more surfeiting, more cloying, than too much pleasure. Fred must come down again; and I hope the next time he visits us we shall not nearly have him drowned. I fear that he will take a sad report of us all back with him to town.”
Fred was very anxious to go away good friends with everybody, and would have liked very much to have shaken hands with Mr Jones, Bill Jenkins, and the Stapleses; but this could not very well be managed, for Mr Jones had left for the sea-side, and Bill Jenkins had gone to a situation. However, Fred bade farewell to everybody he could think of, and left messages for those he could not see; and at last the time of starting arrived, and Old Sam brought the pony and chaise round to the door.
The box was lifted in; and the little hamper filled with fruit, and the large bandbox full of curiosities that Fred had collected, all found a place by the departing visitor. The morning was brighter than ever, and everything around him looked so fresh and lovely, that a great sob would keep trying to get up into poor Fred’s throat to make a noise, and the efforts he made to keep it down quite upset him. He gave such a longing farewell look up at the front of the house, and round at the garden, then kissed Mrs Inglis, and shook hands with Sam, who returned the grasp warmly, and said in a whisper about the greatest thing he could say, and that was that he wished he “warn’t a-going.”