“No,” said Edgar, pulling violently at the leaves that grew on the bushes near.
“Shouldn’t you like to be?”
“What is the use of liking?” asked Edgar North. “I shall be if it is God’s will, and I shan’t if it is not.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “that is a dreadful way to talk. I’m quite sure it is not the right way.”
“Well, I know I have thought a great deal about it, especially when I have been ill, and it always makes me miserable, so I try not to think, and I can’t think what made me begin it now. Do let us talk about something else.”
And suddenly Edgar became very much interested in the subject of the next local examination, in which several of his schoolfellows expected to take part, and was much more lively for the rest of the walk than he had been before.
But he did not seem to avoid Arthur; on the contrary, after that day, he often seemed to try to be near him; and at length he surprised him very much, by asking if he would come out for another walk. Arthur remembered the last one that they had had, and he wondered why! it was not for any pleasure to himself that he agreed, but at any rate this time it was not a cricket-day.
“You did not want to come, did you?” asked Edgar, after some little time, when they had been walking along through the fields, and had now reached a distant one, where the hawthorn hedge was throwing a sheltering shade. “And I expect you would just as soon sit down, as walk on further. Shall we stop here?”
“What a queer fellow you are, Edgar,” said Arthur; “I can’t make you out at all.”
“How am I queer?” asked Edgar.