Bertie spoke quickly, with flushed cheeks, averted eyes, and a good deal of confusion.
"Our Cousins Dick and Harry Gregory?" Eddie said quietly.
"Yes; they and aunt were with Mr. Murray; and he asked me ever such a lot of questions and said the funniest things. Of course he never had heard a word of poor papa's death, and how we had to leave Riversdale; and how he did pucker his eyebrows over it! And when I said I was in Uncle Gregory's office, and you were with Uncle Clair learning to be an artist, you should see how he wrinkled his forehead and scowled! Then he asked me how I came to be here, and I told him, and how near I came to missing you all, and I wondered whatever I should have done if I had. He said I might have had a very happy time with my cousins: gone in a yacht to the Isle of Wight and round the Land's End; and I couldn't help looking surprised. It showed how little he knew of Aunt Gregory, though he was with her; and then he said he'd call and see Uncle Clair, and I forgot to tell him, and that's all. Let us go and have a swim, Eddie, and perhaps Agnes will like to rest here for a while."
For answer, Eddie threw himself on the smooth pebbly beach, and hiding his face on his folded arms, sobbed bitterly, wildly almost. Bertie looked and listened in dumb, helpless amazement. Eddie crying! it seemed absurd, impossible! The rough, hardy, resolute boy would not have cried in such a place for anything, "not," he said afterwards, in confidence, to Agnes, "not if he had a tooth pulled out!" and that, in Bertie's idea, was the climax of human misery, the height of human endurance. But Eddie's sobs continued for a long time without either Agnes or Bertie attempting to offer any consolation, for the simple reason that they did not know in the least what was the matter with him. Once, indeed, Agnes ventured to ask timidly if he were ill, and the answer was such a rough "No, leave me alone!" that she sat and looked at Bertie for what seemed two hours, and was in reality about nine or ten minutes.
The pains and passions, as well as the pleasures of childhood are very fleeting, after all, and Eddie Rivers, in spite of his fifteen years, was a very child, so that he recovered himself quickly, and looked round with an expression of shameful defiance; but on Bertie's puzzled and Agnes' sorrowful face he saw neither contempt nor amusement, and he stammered out a sort of apology.
"I'm very sorry, Bertie, but I could not help it."
"Poor Eddie!" Agnes whispered sympathetically.
"I'm glad you are all right, Ted," Bertie cried, with an uncomfortable feeling in his throat. "I thought you were going to be really bad."
"So I was, 'really bad,' Bert," Eddie answered, with a very unusual accession of gentleness and humility. "I didn't like anybody or anything a moment ago; I thought you were very selfish. I quite disliked those unkind Gregory boys; I thought Mr. Murray came to see us just to make fun of us. I was as wicked and miserable as ever I could be, and I do wish we had our dear ponies, and could ride every day like other boys, instead of moping down here on the beach."
"I thought you liked it, Eddie. I do, over anything," Bertie replied, looking quite serious; "and I'm sure if Uncle Clair knew you wanted a pony badly, he would let you have one. Why didn't you tell him?"