Little did I think that my family chronicle was to supply Weston with
a new field for his talents!
In the midst of my shame, I could hardly help admiring the clever way
in which he had remembered all the details, and twisted them into a
comic ballad, which he had composed overnight, and which he now
recited with a mock heroic air and voice, which made every point tell,
and kept the boys in convulsions of laughter. Not a smile crossed his
long, lantern-jawed face; but Mr. Thomas Johnson made no effort this
time to hide a severe fit of his peculiar spasms in his spotted
handkerchief.
Sometimes--at night--in the very bottom of my own heart, when the
darkness seemed thick with horrors, and when I could not make up my
mind whether to keep my ears strained to catch the first sound of
anything dreadful, or to pull the blankets over my head and run the
risk of missing it,--in such moments, I say, I have had a passing
private doubt whether I had inherited my share of the family instinct
of courage at a crisis.
It was therefore a relief to me to feel that in this moment of
despair, when I was only waiting till the boys, being no longer
amused by Weston, should turn to amuse themselves with me, my first
and strongest feeling was a sense of relief that Rupert was not at
school, and that I could bear the fruits of my own folly on my own
shoulders.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36