"Very sad, Grandy."

"And displeased with me? Yes, displeased that I have taken you suddenly
away from the pretty young gentleman, who was so kind to you, without
encouraging the chance that you were to meet with him again."

"It was not like you, Grandy," answered Sophy; and her under-lip slightly
pouted, while the big tears swelled to her eye.

"True," said the vagabond; "anything resembling common-sense is not like
me. But don't you think that I did what I felt was best for you? Must I
not have some good cause for it, whenever I have the heart deliberately
to vex you?"

Sophy took his hand and pressed it, but she could not trust herself to
speak, for she felt that at such effort she would have burst out into
hearty crying. Then Waife proceeded to utter many of those wise sayings,
old as the hills, and as high above our sorrows as hills are from the
valley in which we walk. He said how foolish it was to unsettle the mind
by preposterous fancies and impossible hopes. The pretty young gentleman
could never be anything to her, nor she to the pretty young gentleman.
It might be very well for the pretty young gentleman to promise to
correspond with her, but as soon as he returned to his friends he would
have other things to think of, and she would soon be forgotten; while
she, on the contrary, would be thinking of him, and the Thames and the
butterflies, and find hard life still more irksome. Of all this, and
much more, in the general way of consolers who set out on the principle
that grief is a matter of logic, did Gentleman Waife deliver himself with
a vigour of ratiocination which admitted of no reply, and conveyed not a
particle of comfort. And feeling this, that great actor--not that he was