“But, Loo, I can’t stop here after what has happened,” said Charley when they had both recovered a little; “he may be going to do everything that’s right for anything we can tell. Don’t let us talk as if it were anybody’s fault; but I can’t stop here, you know, about Fontanel, doing nothing, as if—— Don’t cry, Loo. You would not like, anyhow, to have an idle fellow for a brother. Harry is the clever one; but I daresay my godfather, the old general, could get me a commission; and I could live on my pay,” said Charley, with a slight quiver in his upper lip, “and perhaps get on. I don’t think I should make a bad soldier—only that there’s the examinations, and all that. It’s very hard, Loo, to have lost all this time.” “Oh, Charley, Charley dear! I can’t bear it—it’s too hard to put up with,” cried poor little passionate Loo. “Now don’t you go and take away what little strength a fellow has,” remonstrated Charley; “it must be put up with, and what’s the use of talking? Now look here, Loo; if you make a fuss, it will do no good in the world, but only vex mamma; she can’t mend it, you know. I mean to put the best face on it, and say I want to see the world, and that sort of thing; and believe exactly as if—as if the fire had never happened,” said Charley, with a dark momentary cloud upon his face. “I can make my mother believe me; and it will be a comfort to her to have me out of the way,” said the heroic lad, with something like a suppressed sob, “and to think I don’t suspect anything. It _is_ hard—I don’t say anything else; but, Loo, we must bear it all the same.”