to recover the first fervent rapture.




VII

The holidays were near. An noon of a blazing hot day Jean was
seated in the shade on the dwarf-wall that bounded the school
count towards the headmaster's garden, He was playing languidly
at shovel-board with a schoolfellow, a lad as pretty as a girl
with his curls and his jacket of white duck.

"Ewans," said Jean, as he pushed a pebble along one of the lines
drawn in charcoal on the stone coping, "Ewans, you must find
it tiresome to be a boarder?"

"Mother cannot have me with her at home," replied the boy.

Servien asked why.

"Oh! Because----" stammered Ewans.

He stared a long time at the white pebble he held in his hand
ready to play, before he added:

"My mother goes travelling."

"And your father?"