CHAPTER XXXIV 'I MUST THINK OF MY CHILD, MIKE' 'Ah! the problem of grief and evil is, and will be always, the greatest enigma of being, only second to the existence of being itself.'--AMIEL. Michael listened in a sort of dream. He was telling himself all the time that his opportunity was come, and that it was incumbent on him not to sleep another night under his cousin's roof until he had made known to him this grievous thing. As soon as they rose from the table, and Dr. Ross was preparing as usual to follow his wife into the drawing-room until the prayer-bell summoned him into the schoolroom, Michael said, a little more seriously than usual: 'Dr. Ross, would you mind giving me half an hour in the study after prayers? I want your advice about something;' for he wished to secure this quiet time before Audrey returned from her party. The Doctor was an observant man, in spite of his occasional absence of mind, and he saw at once that something was amiss. 'Shall you be able to do without us this evening, Emmie?' he said, with his usual old-fashioned politeness, that his wife and daughters thought the very model of perfection: 'it is too bad to leave you alone when Audrey is not here to keep you company.' But Mrs. Ross assured him that she would not in the least mind such solitude; she was reading the third volume of an exciting novel, and would not be sorry to finish it. And as soon as this was settled and the coffee served, the gong sounded, and they all adjourned to the schoolroom. Michael never missed this function, as he called it. He liked to sit in his corner and watch the rows of boyish faces before him, and try to imagine what their future would be; and, above all things, he loved to hear the fresh young voices uniting in their evening hymn; but on this evening he regarded them with some degree of sadness. 'They have the best of it,' he thought rather moodily; 'they little know what is before them, poor fellows! and the hard rubs fate has in store for them.' And then, as they filed past him and one little fellow smiled at him, he drew him aside and put him between his knees. 'You look very happy, Willie. I suppose you have not been caned to-day?'--a favourite joke of the Captain's. 'No, sir,' returned Willie proudly; 'but Jefferson minor fought me, and I licked him. You may ask the other fellows, and they would tell you it was all fair. He is a head taller than me, and I licked him,' finished Willie, with an air of immense satisfaction on his chubby baby face.