My dear mother, the gracious baroness, made extraordinary exertions to drive away my low spirits.
Knowing my fondness for coffee cake, she suffered no one to make it for me excepting herself. And at dinner she took care to place a professor or, some learned person beside me, so that I might not find myself condemned to silence for the want of a gifted mind to measure mental swords with.
But all to no purpose. I grew daily more taciturn, absent-minded, and plunged into meditation. With my eyes fixed upon vacancy, I sat like one with unbalanced mind amidst the lightest-hearted merry-makers. In vain the company besought me to relate past adventures, to tell them tales already thrice told. I only shook my head with a mournful smile, and made good my escape from scenes which were painful to me.
Bulger felt that his little master was suffering, and coaxed with plaintive whining to have me make known to him the cause of my grief.
His joy was wild and boisterous when he saw my body-servant enter my apartments, bearing an empty traveling chest upon his shoulders.
To tell the truth, life at the baronial hall pleased Bulger not a whit more than it did me.
The house dogs annoyed him with their attentions, and he was wont to retire from the dining hall with a look of utter disgust upon his face, when one of the family cats, in the most friendly spirit, drew near and tasted a bit of his dinner.
All caresses, too, from other hands than mine were distasteful to him; and, although for my sake he would permit the gracious baroness to stroke his silken ears, yet any familiarity on the part of the elder baron was firmly, but respectfully, declined.
The very moment I saw my chests placed here and there in my apartments, my spirits rose. I became like another being. The color returned to my cheeks, the gleam to my eye, the old-time ring to my voice.
From lip to lip, the word was passed: “The little baron is making ready for another journey!”