Besides, be it remembered that if it were all plain sailing with us in this world we should not be able to appreciate how really happy our lives are. The sky is always bluest 'twixt the darkest clouds.
On the whole, Roland, who took stock, and, with honest Bill and Jake Solomons, went over the books every quarter, had but little reason to complain. This stock-taking consumed most of their spare time for the greater part of a week, and when it was finished Roland invariably gave a dinner-party, at which I need hardly say his dear friend Dick Temple was present. And this was always the happiest of happy nights to Dick, because the girl he loved more than all things on earth put together was here, and looked so innocent and beautiful in her simple dresses of white and blue.
There was no such thing as flirtation here, but Dick was fully and completely in earnest when he told himself that if he lived till he was three- or four-and-twenty he would ask Peggy to be his wife.
Ah! there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.
Dick, I might, could, would, or should have told you before, lived with a bachelor uncle, who, being rather old and infirm, seldom came out. He had good earnest men under him, however, as overseers, and his plantations were thriving, especially that in which tobacco was cultivated.
The old man was exceedingly fond of Dick, and Dick would be his heir.
Probably it was for his uncle's sake that Dick stayed in the country--and of course for Peggy's and Roland's--for, despite its grand field for sport and adventure, the lad had a strange longing to go to England and play cricket or football.
He had been born in Britain just as Roland was, and had visited his childhood's home more than once during his short life.
Now just about this time Don Pedro, or Mr. Peter as all called him, had asked for and obtained a holiday. He was going to Pará for a change, he said, and to meet a friend from England.
That he did meet a friend from England there was little doubt, but their interview was a very short one. Where he spent the rest of his time was best known to himself.