The Oriel Window

by Mrs. Molesworth

Oh no; the last of the little tenants of the nests overhead had said good-bye several weeks ago now. Ferdy's fancy had often followed them in their strange mysterious journey across the sea.

"I wonder," he thought, "if they really were rather sorry to go this year—sorrier than usual, because of me."

He took up a bit of carving that he had been working at; it was meant to be a small frame for a photograph of Chrissie, and he hoped to get it finished in time for his mother's birthday. It was very pretty, for he had made great progress in the last few months. In and out round the frame twined the foliage he had copied from the real leaves surrounding his dear window, and up in one corner was his pet idea—a swallow's head, "face," Ferdy called it, peeping out from an imaginary nest behind. This head was as yet far from completed, and he almost dreaded to work at it, so afraid was he of spoiling it. To-day he had given it a few touches which pleased him, and he took it up, half meaning to do a little more to it, but he was feeling tired, and laid it down again and went back to his own thoughts, as his blue eyes gazed up dreamily into the grey, somewhat stormy-looking autumn sky.

Some changes had come in the last few months. Dr. Lilly was at home again, so Ferdy and Christine no longer had entire possession of their dear governess, though they still saw her every day except Sunday, and sometimes even then too. Ferdy was, on the whole, a little stronger, though less well than when able to be out for several hours together in the open air. What the doctors now thought as to the chances of his ever getting quite well, he did not know; he had left off asking. Children live much in the present, or if not quite that, in a future which is made by their own thoughts and feelings in the present. And he had grown accustomed to his life, and to putting far before him, mistily, the picture of the day when he would be "all right again." He had not really given up the hope of it, though his mother sometimes thought he had.

The truth was that as yet the doctors did not know and could not say.

But the present had many interests and much happiness in it for Ferdy, little as he would have been able to believe this, had he foreseen all he was to be deprived of in a moment that sad May morning.

His friendship for Jesse was one of the things he got a great deal from. Nothing as yet was settled about the boy's future, eager though Mr. Brock was to see him launched in another kind of life. For both Mr. Ross and Dr. Lilly felt that any great step of the sort must first be well thought over, especially as Jesse was now working steadily at Farmer Meare's and earning regular wages, and seemingly quite contented. Though he had had his troubles too. Some of his old wild companions were very jealous of him and very spiteful; and bit by bit a sort of league had been started against him among the worst and roughest of the Draymoor lads, several of whom were angry at not being allowed to join the class in the shed at Bollins, some still more angry at having been sent away from the class, for Jesse and his friend Barney who acted as a sort of second in command were very particular as to whom they took as pupils. Or rather as to whom they kept; they did not mind letting a boy come two or three times to see "what it was like," but if he turned out idle or disturbing to the others, and with no real interest in the work, he was told in very plain terms that he need not come back.

They were patient with some rather dull and stupid lads, however. Barney especially so. For he was very "quick" himself. And some of these dull ones really were the most satisfactory. They were so very proud of finding that they could, with patience and perseverance, "make" something, useful at any rate, if not highly ornamental. No one who has not been tried in this way knows the immense pleasure of the first feeling of the power to "make."

These things Ferdy was thinking of, among others, as he lay there quietly this afternoon. He was alone, except for an occasional "look in" from Thomas or Flowers, as Mr. Ross had taken his wife and Christine for a drive.