“I confess I like him better this way,” said Lord Ashden. “The Philip of La Scala awed and frightened me a little. I was afraid he would not live to grow up, such children so often die young; and I have lost so many of those I have loved that it would be very dreadful to think what life would be to me without this dear child.”
“Dear old Frederick!” said his friend, laying his hand affectionately on his broad shoulders. “It is not strange that you love the boy, and I hope with all my heart that he may be spared to you for many, many happy years to come.”
Chapter XVI
Home again
“DEAR me!” said Philip, with a long-drawn sigh, as the anchor slipped from the bow of the yacht in the harbor at Nice. “It is all nearly over.”
“But you are not really sorry to be going home, are you?” asked Lord Ashden, who was standing beside him watching the sailors as they made their preparations for putting the party ashore on the following morning.
“Oh, no!” cried the boy, his face all aglow; “only I have thought so much about going back to England that it hardly seems possible that it is so close at hand; I have to pinch myself sometimes to reassure myself that it is all really true.”
“What a queer thing life is anyway!” said Lord Ashden, musing, as he looked into the deep blue water that rippled all around them. “Be we never so happy in the present, we are always looking forward to something just ahead of us; and it is fortunate indeed that we cannot penetrate the veil which hides the future from our eyes. I can remember so well, when I was your age, looking forward with just the same eagerness to what was just beyond, and often when it came—but what’s the matter, Philip, my boy?—you look as though you were seeing ghosts, too. Come, let us have a brisk walk on the deck together, and perhaps we shall succeed in feeling more cheerful.”
But Philip did not smile with his usual gayety, and when his friend looked down in surprise he saw that the boy’s eyes were full of tears. “Do you know,” he said, in a low voice, “much as I long to go to England, something makes me half dread it; is it not a strange feeling?”