“It is horrid having to go, mother,” said the boy; “but we must make the best of it. If you look so unhappy, I shall be sorry I ever thought of it.”
His mother tried to smile, and said,—
“Yes, we must try and make the best of it, dear boys; and if we cannot seem as glad as we should like to be, it’s not to be wondered at at first, is it?”
“I hope you’ll get holidays enough now and then to run up,” said Horace.
“Oh yes; I don’t fancy there’ll be much difficulty about that,” replied Reg. “In fact, it’s possible I may have to come up now and then on business.”
There was a silence for a few seconds, and then he added rather nervously,—
“By the way, mother, about the £50. I had intended to ask Mr Richmond to advance it, although I should have hated to do so. But now, I was wondering—do you think there would be any objection to taking it out of our money, and letting it be invested in my name in the Corporation? It really wouldn’t make any difference, for you’d get exactly the same interest for it as you got through Mr Richmond; and, of course, the principal would belong to you too.”
“I see no objection,” said Mrs Cruden. “It’s our common stock, and if we can use it for the common good, so much the better.”
“Thanks,” said Reginald. “If you wouldn’t mind sending a line to Mr Richmond’s clerk to-morrow, he could let me have the cheque to take down or Monday with me.”
The three days that followed were dismal ones for the three Crudens. There are few miseries like that of an impending separation. We wish the fatal moment to arrive and end our suspense. We know of a thousand things we want to say, but the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of the crisis we dread.