For natures like Humphrey's are not fit for this rough world. Such a capacity for sorrow has no rest here, and such a capability for enjoyment is fittest to find its happiness in those all-perfect pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore. * * * * * * * * * Humphrey was seldom conscious during the days that followed. He was either in heavy sleep, or incoherent rambling. He would lie talking to his mother's picture in a whisper; going over games and conversations with Miles; or wandering on unintelligibly to himself. Whenever he was aware of his father's presence, he would complain of a curious noise in his head, and ask what the rushing and singing in his ears meant; but before he got an answer, he would ramble off again, and take no notice of what was passing around him. Sir Everard, sitting for hours by his bedside, often thought of the boy's allusions to his mother's picture, and of the look with which Humphrey had greeted his inquiry as to how he had known it was she. Many words that at times dropped from the child, puzzled him, and he often longed to question him on the subject. Seeing one night a gleam of consciousness in the dark eyes, he went closer to the sofa, and tried to attract the boy's attention. "What are you thinking about, Humphrey?" "Mother," he answered, in a faint voice; "when is she coming to fetch me?" But before there was time for an answer, he was overcome by his usual drowsiness, and Sir Everard's opportunity was gone. But perhaps what bewildered him most was the way in which the child had prayed to be allowed to die. To Sir Everard, with his one-sided view of the boy, it was all such an enigma. Here was a child who had always seemed so entirely taken up with the pleasures of the passing moment, that his past and future were alike merged in the enjoyment of the present--a creature on whom sorrow and loss had produced no permanent impression passing over him, as it were, only to leave him more gay, more heedless than ever. _Permanent_ impression! why, as far as Sir Everard knew, they had produced no impression at all! Five days after his mother's death, he had seen him romping and playing as usual, and from that day to this, her name had never passed his lips! And _now_ he talked of her as if her memory were very fresh and familiar; and looked upon death as calmly as if he had been contemplating it all his life. What did it mean? When had he thought upon such things? How was it that he, who had enjoyed to the full the pleasures of his young life, should be so ready to renounce them all? Sir Everard was fairly baffled, as he asked himself the question over and over again. Is it, then, so difficult to understand? Sir Everard should have gone to Wordsworth, and learnt his lesson there. "Children," he says, "are blest and powerful:-- "Their world lies more justly balanced, _Partly at their feet, and part far from them_."