'Felix, I do want the big spotty horse.'

Such shouts and insinuations, all deserving the epithet of the first,
pursued Felix as he entered a room, small, and with all the contents
faded and worn, but with an air of having been once tasteful, and
still made the best of. Contents we say advisedly, meaning not merely
the furniture but the inmates, namely, the pale wan fragile mother,
working, but with the baby on her knee, and looking as if care and
toil had brought her to skin and bone, though still with sweet eyes
and a lovely smile; the father, tall and picturesque, with straight
handsome features, but with a hectic colour, wasted cheek, and
lustrous eye, that were sad earnests of the future. He was still
under forty, his wife some years less; and elder than either in its
expression of wasted suffering was the countenance of the little girl
of thirteen years old who lay on the sofa, with pencil, paper, and
book, her face with her mother's features exaggerated into a look at
once keen and patient, all three forming a sad contrast to the solid
exuberant health on the other side the door.

Truly the boy who entered was a picture of sturdy English vigour,
stout-limbed, rosy-faced, clear eyed, open, and straight-forward
looking, perhaps a little clumsy with the clumsiness of sixteen,
especially when conscience required tearing spirits to be subdued to
the endurance of the feeble. It was, however, a bright congratulating
look that met him from the trio. The little girl started up, 'Your
sovereign's come, Felix!'

The father showed his transparent-looking white teeth in a merry
laugh. 'Here are the galleons, you boy named in a lucky hour! How