Jeremy and Hamlet: A Chronicle of Certain Incidents in the Lives of a Boy, a Dog, and a Country TownWalpole, Hugh
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Jeremy and Hamlet: A Chronicle of Certain Incidents in the Lives of a Boy, a Dog, and a Country Town
Walpole, Hugh
Boys -- Fiction; Dogs -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“Who bears in mind misfortunes gone,
Must live in fear of more;
The Happy Man, whose heart is light,
Gives no such shadows power;
He bears in mind no haunting past
To start his week on Monday:
No graves are written on his mind
To visit on a Sunday;
He lives his life by days, not years,
Each day’s a life complete,
Which every morning finds renewed
With temper calm and sweet.”
How could the world help but love him, jolly, amiable, sensible man that
he was?
But once and again . . . once and again. . . . And so it was now. And
the fish that was eluding him was young Jeremy Cole.
On the seventh or eighth day he was aware of it. At breakfast he looked
across the table and saw the small square-shaped boy gravely winking at
Mary. Why was he winking at his sister? It could not be, surely it could
not be because of anything that he himself had said? And yet, looking
behind him, so to speak, he could not remember that anyone else had been
talking. This was enough to make him think, and, thinking, it occurred
to him that that small boy had from the very first been aloof and
reserved. Not natural for small boys to be reserved with jolly uncles.
And it was not as though the boy were in general a reserved child. No,
he had heard him laughing and jumping about the house enough to bring
the roof down. Playing around with that dog of his. . . . Quite a
normal, sporting boy. Come to think of it, the best of the family. By
far the best of the family. You’d never think, to look at him, that he
was Herbert’s son.
Therefore after breakfast in the hall he cried in his jolly, hearty
tones:
“I say, Jeremy, what do you say to taking your old uncle round the town
this morning, eh? Showing him the shops and things, what? Might be
something we’d like to buy. . . .”
Jeremy was half-way up the stairs. He came slowly down again. On the
bottom step, looking very gravely at his uncle, he said:
“I’m very sorry, Uncle Percy, but I’m going to school to-morrow morning,
and I promised mother——”
But Mrs. Cole was at this moment coming out of the dining-room. Looking
up and smiling, she said:
“Never mind, Jeremy. Go with Uncle Percy this morning, dear. I can
manage about the shirts. . . .”
Jeremy appeared not to have heard his mother.
“I’m sorry I can’t go out this morning, Uncle Percy. There’s my holiday
task too. I’ve got to swot at it—” and then turned and slowly
disappeared round the corner of the staircase.
Uncle Percy was chagrined. Really he was. He stood with his large body
balanced on his large legs, hesitating, in the hall.
“It is his last morning, Percy,” said Mrs. Cole, looking a little
distressed. “He’s a funny child. He’s always making his own plans.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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