performer had taken before in his own performance was sensibly dimmed. He played with a wandering attention and an uncertain finger, without the gusto of the artist, and his eye ever rested anxiously on Harry, who had more than once complained of the cold, and now sat huddled up by a mountainous fire, bright-eyed and with a burning skin, which seemed to him to cover an interior of ice. At last Mr. Francis could stand it no longer, and laying down his flute came across to where he sat, and with an extraordinary amenity of voice, yet firmly—— "I insist on your going to bed, Harry," he said. "You have caught a chill; it is idle to deny it. Dear lad, do not be so foolish. I have troubled and worried you, I am afraid, with my fussy care for you, and I am very sorry for it. But do not make a bad matter worse, and do[Pg 39] not punish me, I ask you, as well as yourself, for my ill-timed suggestions. I have apologized; be generous." [Pg 39] Harry got up. It was impossible that a mere superficial boyish obstinacy, of which he was already ashamed, should stand out against this, and besides he felt really unwell. "Yes, I am afraid I have caught a chill," he said. "It was foolish of me not to change as you advised me when I came in. It was even more foolish of me to have been annoyed at your excellent suggestion that I should." Mr. Francis's face brightened. "Now get to bed at once, my dear boy," he said, "and I have no doubt you will be all right in the morning. You have plenty of blankets? Good-night." But Harry was by no means all right in the morning, and it seemed that for his uncle the joy of life was dead. There was no brisk early walk for him to-day. Vail was no longer a hungry place, and his breakfast was but the parody of a meal. Unreasonably, he blamed himself for his nephew's indisposition, and the morning passed for him in blank turnings over of the leaves of undecipherable books, in reiterated visits to the kitchen with suggestions as to a suitable invalid diet, and disconnected laments to Geoffrey over this untoward occurrence. "Ah! this will teach a foolish old man to hold his tongue," he said. "It will teach him, also, that old fellows can not understand the young.[Pg 40] How excellent were my intentions, but how worse than impotent, how disastrous! It is a cold job to grow old, Geoffrey; it is even colder to grow old and still feel young. Poor Harry simply
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