“Well, I hope you won’t leap into a big bog-hole, that’s all.”
“Well, no. I will leave that suicidal performance for those who can never hope to leap any higher. How do you like this brooch? Lord Egreville sent it this morning.”
“If I were you, I would tell him to keep his dead wife’s jewelry a little longer. He might require it for some one else, if you pick up a duke or a millionaire.”
Having had my parting shot, I judged it wise to leave Belle to her own devices, and went off to my little room, where I practiced industriously on my fiddle for an hour and a half. There were plenty of servants here, and I had no excuse for offering to help with the cooking, though I would have liked nothing better. Indeed, I had often thought that if I had not belonged to a family in which it was necessary to keep up appearances, I would have become a professional cook. But I had still a little congenial employment to turn to. Jerry was going off to school this week, and I had undertaken to mark all his things myself, besides making him sundry little knick-knacks that would prove useful to him.
I found it very hard to part with Jerry, when the time came for him to go, and was rather hurt to find that he cared less about leaving us behind, than he did about the delights of travel and school-life to which he was looking forward.
“I did think you would be sorry to leave me,” I murmured, reproachfully, just as he was being resigned to the charge of the tutor who was going to accompany him to the school, and afterward take part in teaching the boys.
“Well, what’s a fellow to do?” Jerry rejoined. “You wouldn’t have me to cry and look like a muff, would you? It isn’t the same as if I was a girl. It wouldn’t matter then if I cried my eyes red.”
“No more it would, Jerry. Good-by, dear. And you’ll be sure to write often to me?”
“Quite sure. Good-by, Dorrie. Good-by, pa. And, oh! Dorrie, I’ve forgotten my bag of marbles, and my new top. Will you send them to me?”
There was barely time to answer in the affirmative, and then the child was off. Then my father, having seen me comfortably seated in the waggonette in which we had driven to the station, flicked his whip, and off we started on our return drive, little dreaming of the terrible events which were to come to pass ere the dear boy from whom we had just parted came back to the home he left so blithely.