“I beg pardon,” said the professor; “and we are forgetting the object of our visit. Lawrence, my boy, would you like to go to Brighton or Hastings, or the Isle of Wight?”
“No,” said the lad sadly, “it is too much bother.”
“To Devonshire, then—to Torquay?”
“No, sir. I went there last winter, and I believe it made me worse. I don’t want to be always seeing sick people in invalid chairs, and be always hearing them talk about their doctors. How long shall you be gone, sir?”
“How long? I don’t know, my lad. Why?”
The boy was silent, and lay back gazing out of the window in a dreamy way for some moments before he spoke again, and then his hearers were startled by his words.
“I feel,” he said, speaking as if to himself, “as if I should soon get better if I could go to a land where the sun shone, and the sea was blue, and the sweet soft cool breezes blew down from the mountains that tower up into the clear sky—where there were fresh things to see, and there would be none of this dreadful winter fog.”
The professor and the lawyer exchanged glances, and the latter took a great pinch of snuff out of his box, and held it half-way up towards his nose.
Then he started, and let it fall upon the carpet—so much brown dust, for the boy suddenly changed his tone, and in a quick excited manner exclaimed, as he started forward:
“Oh! Mr Preston, pray—pray—take me with you when you go.”