The new arrival gave a whistle of surprise.
“How do you feel this afternoon, Henry?” asked the second of the brothers.
“Oh, very poorly—very miserable. In fact, I don’t seem to get any better.”
This lugubrious reply, strange to say, did not evoke the sympathy which a listener might have expected. The boys burst into roars of laughter.
“Poor Henry Burns!” exclaimed the eldest boy, giving the self-declared invalid a blow on the chest that would have meant the annihilation of weak lungs. “He will never be any better.”
“And he may be a great deal worse,” said the second boy, slapping the other on the back so hard that the dust flew under the blow.
“Won’t the boys like him, though?” asked the third and youngest boy,—“that is, if they ever come.”
Henry Burns received these sallies with the utmost unconcern. If he enjoyed the effect which his remarks had produced, it was denoted only by a twinkle in his eyes. He was rather a slender, pale-complexioned youth, of fourteen years. A physiognomist might have found in his features an unusual degree of coolness and self-control, united with an abnormal fondness for mischief; but Henry Burns would have passed with the ordinary person as a frail boy, fonder of books than of sports.
Just then the captain of the steamer put his head out of the pilot-house and called to the eldest of the brothers:
“I’ve got a note for you, George Warren. A young chap who said he was on his way here in a canoe came aboard at Millville and asked me to give it to you; and there was another young chap in a canoe alongside who asked me to say they’d be here to-night.”