him so unusually and to let me with him if i could not hope to advise him before i had well concluded he began to laugh � at first but soon with returning gaiety tut it s nothing nothing he replied i told you at the inn in london i am heavy company for myself sometimes i have been a nightmare to myself just now � must have had one i think at odd dull times nursery tales come up into the memory for what they are i believe i have been myself with the bad boy who didn t care and became food for lions � a kind of going to the dogs i suppose what old women call the horrors have been creeping over me from head to foot i have been afraid of myself you are afraid of nothing else i think said i perhaps not and yet may have enough to be afraid of too he answered well so it goes by i am not about to be again david but i tell yon my good fellow once more that it would have been well for me and for more than me if i had had a steadfast and judicious father his face was always full of expression but i never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words with his glance bent on the fire so much for that he said making as if he tossed something light into the air with his hand � why being gone i am a man again q the personal history and experience like and now for dinner if i have not like broken up the feast with most admired disorder but where are they all i wonder said i god knows said after strolling to the looking for you i strolled in here and found the place deserted that set me thinking and you found me thinking the advent of mrs with a basket explained how the house had happened to be empty she had hurried out to buy something that was needed against mr s return with the tide and had left the door open in the meanwhile lest ham and little em ly with whom it was an early night should come home while she was gone after very much improving mrs s spirits by a cheerful salutation and a embrace took my arm and hurried me away he had improved his own spirits no less than mrs s for they were again at their usual flow and he was full of conversation as we went along � and so he said gaily we abandon this life to morrow do we so we agreed i returned and our places by the coach are taken you know ay there s no help for it i suppose said i have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here i wish there was not as long as the novelty should last said i laughing like enough he returned though there s a sarcastic meaning in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend well i dare say i am a capricious fellow david i know i am but while the iron is hot i can strike it vigorously too i could pass a reasonably good examination already as a pilot in these waters i think mr says you are a wonder i returned a phenomenon eh laughed indeed he does and you know how truly knowing how ardent you are in any pursuit you follow and how easily you can master it and that me most in you � that you should be contented with such fitful uses of your powers contented he answered merrily i am never contented except with your freshness my gentle as to i have never learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the of these days are turning round and round i missed it somehow in a bad and now don t care about it � you know i have bought a boat down here what an extraordinary fellow you are i exclaimed stopping � for this was the first i had heard of it when you may never care to come near the place again i don t know that he returned i have taken a fancy to the place at all events walking me briskly on i have bought a boat that was for sale � a mr says and so she is � and mr will be master of her in my absence now i understand you said i you pretend to have bought it for yourself but you have really done so to confer a benefit on him i might have known as much at first knowing you of david my dear kind how can i tell you what i think of your generosity he answered turning red the less said the better didn t i know cried i didn t i say that there was not a joy or sorrow or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to you aye aye he answered you told me all that there let it rest we have said enough afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light of it i only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker pace than before she must be newly said and i shall leave behind to see it done that i may know she is quite complete did i tell you had come down no oh yes came down this morning with a letter from my mother as our looks met i observed that he was pale even to his lips though he looked very steadily at me i feared that some difference between him and his mother might have led to his 