sides, why should I not be having my holidays now, instead of looking five months a-head? I ought not to be going at all.
The train comes snorting in—how sickeningly hot it looks!—and somehow I am bundled into it. As it is starting, I lean out of the window, and, regardless of porters and his own disgust, I hug Jack round the neck with despairing energy and a splashing shower of tears. "Good-bye!" I cry, waving my wet rag and scarlet nose out of the window as long as he is in sight; then I tumble back into the carriage, plump into the arms of a nervous, spindle-shanked, elderly gentleman, who shoots me off his knees with such vigour that I take an involuntary seat on the opposite side.
It matters very little to me where I am, for my whole attention is taken up with hard crying—crying that is as unlike other people's tears as a floodgate is to a brooklet. I wonder if, when I am grown up, I shall get out of this habit of wasteful, exhaustive weeping? I always did save my troubles up into a lump and clear them all off at once. It takes me some time to begin, but when I do I don't stop in a hurry. We are half-way to our destination before my nose and cheeks have lost their first glossy shininess, and the elderly gentleman has shut his gaping mouth of amazement. Thank goodness, I have mother; and after a while she brings me to a tolerable state of composure.
Charteris, the place to which I am going, is eighty miles from home: so it is evening before we arrive there—the last six miles being performed by coach through scenery that would delight me were not my heart so heavy. We stop before a long, low building, with a great many windows in two level lines. It is approached by a handsome carriage drive, terminating in a species of court, and the house door is entered by a porch. We are shown into a moderately large room, hung with maps. It has a stiff, schoolish air that chills me and prepares my soul for all manner of cold, barren, loveless laws and habits. What would I not give for our
