“There I told you so. She see me come in here, and she’s after me because I haven’t got on with my casks. Oh, how sharp she is!”
Jem gave Don an intelligent nod of the head, and moved out, while the lad stood gazing at the opposite window and listened to the sharp voice addressing the foreman of the yard.
“Poor Jem! He isn’t happy either!” said Don, sadly, as the voices died away. “We might go right off abroad, and they’d be sorry then and think better of us. I wish I was ten thousand miles away.”
He seated himself slowly on his stool, and rested his arms upon the desk, folding them across his chest; and then, looking straight before him at the door, his mental gaze went right through the panels, and he saw silver rivers flowing over golden sands, while trees of the most glorious foliage drooped their branches, and dipped the ends in the glancing water. The bright sun shone overhead; the tendrils and waving grass were gay with blossoms; birds of lovely plumage sang sweetly; and in the distance, on the one hand, fading away into nothingness, were the glorious blue mountains, and away to his right a shimmering sea.
Don Lavington had a fertile brain, and on the canvas of his imagination he painted panorama after panorama, all bright and beautiful. There were no clouds, no storms, no noxious creatures, no trials and dangers. All was as he thought it ought to be, and about as different from the reality as could be supposed. But Don did not know that in his youthful ignorance, and as he sat and gazed before him, he asked himself whether he had not better make up his mind to go right away.
“Yes, I will go!” he said, excitedly, as he started up in his seat.
“No,” he said directly after, as in imagination now he seemed to be gazing into his mother’s reproachful eyes, “it would be too cowardly; I could not go.”