Duke, to whom she, for her part, had not done justice, whom she had not esteemed as she ought. Mar, however, was forced on his feet, and stood up supporting himself on the table, his weakly length, notwithstanding the stoop in his shoulders, giving him a sort of ascendancy over all around him. Mar’s pale countenance was flushed, he was so moved by the strange commotion in his veins and the unlooked for position into which he was thrust, and this first demand ever made on his boyish courage and powers, that for a moment he could not open his mouth, but looked dumbly round upon the great circle of encouraging faces like an affrighted animal, a large-eyed deer or dog, not knowing what was going to be done to him. His large eyes were full of tears, through which he saw the people round him as through a mist, yet took in everything, his uncle’s look of sympathy, Letty’s anxious face, who sat with her hands clasped together and her lips moving, as if she would breathe into him what to say. It passed through his mind that this was so like Letty, always wanting to tell you what to say: and in the dizzy height of his excitement he half laughed at this within himself. And then he felt Duke hurting his hand, crushing it as he leant upon the table. The boy woke up and began, with a voice so seldom accustomed to hear itself speak:-- “You are very, very good to drink my health. I haven’t very much health of my own, perhaps wishing for it will make it better. Thank you very much for that. I never knew that Duke meant to mention me. I am nobody beside him. He is a man, and as strong as a horse, and can do anything. I wish with all my heart I was only his little brother, and that he was Lord Frogmore. You may laugh,” cried the boy, warming at the sound, “but it is true. I have often thought, when they said I would not live, that I wished it, for then Duke would have all----” “One moment, my lord,” said one of the listeners, “if someone laughed it was to hear you call yourself his little brother--and you so tall; but there’s nobody here but hopes you will live and be like your father before you. The best landlord that ever was.”