Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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The Story of a Bad Boy

63 of 75

was suffering pangs as poignant as if I had been ten feet high and as old as Methuselah? For, indeed, I was miserable throughout all those five weeks. I went down in the Latin class at the rate of three boys a day. Her fresh young eyes came between me and my book, and there was an end of Virgil. "O love, love, love! Love is like a dizziness, It winna let a body Gang aboot his business." I was wretched away from her, and only less wretched in her presence. The special cause of my woe was this: I was simply a little boy to Miss Glentworth. I knew it. I bewailed it. I ground my teeth and wept in secret over the fact. If I had been aught else in her eyes would she have smoothed my hair so carelessly, sending an electric shock through my whole system? Would she have walked with me, hand in hand, for hours in the old garden, and once when I lay on the sofa, my head aching with love and mortification, would she have stooped down and kissed me if I hadn't been a little boy? How I despised little boys! How I hated one particular little boy-too little to be loved! I smile over this very grimly even now. My sorrow was genuine and bitter. It is a great mistake on the part of elderly people, male and female, to tell a child that he is seeing his happiest days. Don't you believe a word of it, my little friend. The burdens of childhood are as hard to bear as the crosses that weigh us down later in life, while the happinesses of childhood are tame compared with those of our maturer years. And even if this were not so, it is rank cruelty to throw shadows over the young heart by croaking, "Be merry, for to-morrow you die!" As the last days of Nelly's visit drew near, I fell into a very unhealthy state of mind. To have her so frank and unconsciously coquettish with me was a daily torment; to be looked upon and treated as a child was bitter almonds; but the thought of losing her altogether was distraction. The summer was at an end. The days were perceptibly shorter, and now and then came an evening when it was chilly enough to have a wood-fire in our sitting-room. The leaves were beginning to take hectic tints, and the wind was practising the minor pathetic notes of its autumnal dirge. Nature and myself appeared to be approaching our dissolution simultaneously- One evening, the evening previous to the day set for Nelly's departure-how well I remember it-I found her sitting alone by the wide chimney-piece looking musingly at the crackling back log. There were no candles in the room. On her face and hands, and on the small golden cross at her throat, fell the flickering firelight-that ruddy, mellow firelight in which one's grandmother would look poetical. I drew a low stool from the corner and placed it by the side of her chair. She reached out her hand to me, as was her pretty fashion, and so we sat for several moments silently in the changing glow of the burning logs. At length I moved back the stool so that I could see her face in profile without being seen by her. I lost her hand by this movement, but I couldn't have spoken with the listless touch of her fingers on mine. After two or three attempts I said "Nelly" a good deal louder than I intended. Perhaps the effort it cost me was evident in my voice. She raised herself quickly in the chair and half turned towards me. "W'ell, Tom?" "I-I am very sorry you are going away." "So am I. I have enjoyed every hour of my visit." "Do you think you will ever come back here?" "Perhaps," said Nelly, and her eyes wandered off into the fitful firelight. "I suppose you will forget us all very quickly." "Indeed I shall not. I shall always have the pleasantest memories of Rivermouth." Here the conversation died a natural death. Nelly sank into a sort of dream, and I meditated. Fearing every moment to be interrupted by some member of the family, I nerved myself to make a bold dash. "Nelly." "Well." "Do you-" I hesitated. "Do I what?" "Love anyone very much?" "Why, of course I do," said Nelly, scattering her revery with a merry laugh. "I love Uncle Nutter, and Aunt Nutter, and you-and Towser." Towser, our new dog! I couldn't stand that. I pushed back the stool impatiently and stood in front of her.

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