with me; but it is not their fault at all."

"Well, they won't have sport with you when I am round," declared Mrs.
Corbett stoutly.

Years rolled by and Stanley still cherished the hope that some day
"permission" would come for him to go home. He grew very fast and
became rather a fine-looking young man. Once, emboldened by a
particularly kind letter from his mother, he made the request that he
should be allowed to go home for a few days. "If you will let me come
home even for one day, dearest mother," he wrote, "I will come right
back content, and father will not need to see me at all. I want to
stand once more before that beautiful Tissot picture of Christ holding
the wounded lamb in his arms, and I would like to see the hawthorn
hedge when it is in bloom as it will be soon, and above all, dear
mother, I want to see you. And I will come directly away."

He held this letter for many days, and was only emboldened to send it
by Mrs. Corbett's heartiest assurances that it was a splendid letter
and that his mother would like it!

"I do not want to give my mother trouble," he said. "She has already
had much trouble with me; but it might make her more content to see me
and to know that I am so well--and happy."

After the letter had been sent, Stanley counted the days anxiously,
and on the big map of Canada that hung on the kitchen wall he followed
its course until it reached Halifax, and then his mind went with it
tossing on the ocean.