'It is all that aunt--horrid woman!'

'Don't talk of it now. I _will_ see her to-morrow.'

Clara grieved for him whenever she saw him called on to exert himself
to talk; and she even guarded him from the sallies of his young
cousins. Once, when much music and talk was going on, he came and
sat by her, and made her tell him how fondly and affectionately she
had parted with her schoolfellows; and how some of her old foes had
become, as she hoped, friends for life; but she saw his eye fixed and
absent even while she spoke, and she left off suddenly. 'Go on,' he
said, 'I like to hear;' and with a manifest effort he bent his mind
to attend.

'Oh!' thought Clara, as she went up that night--'why will the days
one most expects to be happy turn out so much otherwise? However, he
will manage to tell me all about it when he and his father take me
home to-morrow.'




CHAPTER IV.



OUTWARD BOUND.