“I doubt that: I mean that you might be careful not to ruffle another mind as well as your own. I am sure, Aaron, if you were standing on our poquelaye, as you used to do, and could with a breath bring up or blow away thunder-clouds that were ready to blacken the old castle, and set the seafowl screaming, and throw a gloom over the wide sea and the green land, it would be your pleasure to keep all bright, and send the ugly shade down the sky; and yet, if my father and you find each other ever so calm——” “What does it signify? The blackest clouds are soon gone, one way or another.” “But it is not with our minds and our passions as it is with the sky and the sea. It is God’s pleasure that when the sky is cleared, the face of the earth should be brighter than ever: but when a quarrel has overshadowed kindness, the brightest of the sunshine is gone for ever.” Aaron found it convenient to look up into the actual sky for something to say; and he declared that it was well he did, for some such clouds as his sister had described were making their appearance above the tree-tops which were beginning to rustle in the rising wind. They lost no time in returning, resolving neither to look for more streams, nor to turn aside to call at the Durells’.—Before they reached home, the streets were as plashy as any lane in Jersey, (which is saying a great deal,) and the wind roared among the houses like the fiercest furnace which was to be under Aaron’s charge. The wet was dripping from all the corners of the bundle they carried; and Aaron undertook to spread out its contents in the manufactory to dry, while his sister hastened into the house. CHAPTER VI. LESSONS IN LOYALTY.