On this particular evening it could scarcely be said that he was at work; his lessons were all prepared, and ready for next day: and John was reading for his own pleasure in that delightful calm of feeling which results from the sense of duty performed. It is not always in later life that one is privileged to enjoy this conscious virtue even when one’s work is fully accomplished, but at fifteen the case is different--and, as it happened, among the books on the table, the boy had brought down inadvertently the old copy of Robinson Crusoe which had been so dear to him in his childhood, and which was associated with so many of the confused reminiscences of that long departed past. He had taken it, and was looking at it, before the old people opened the conversation which for the whole evening had been in their thoughts. John scarcely felt it was necessary to open that book. He knew not only what was in it, but a great many things that were not in it, things which it suggested before it was opened, the strange visions of the time through which papa’s image flitted, dim now but still well remembered. He was thinking of all this with a vagueness in which there was no pain. There never indeed had been any pain, only a confused sense of so many things which he could not understand. He might have heard, if he had taken any notice, that the old people were simultaneously clearing their throats, with little coughs and hems--partly of preparation, partly to have him see that they were about to speak, and call his attention. But John did not take any notice, being fully absorbed with his own recollections and interests. Anyone who could have seen them would have been amused to remark how the grandfather and grandmother looked at each other, and made little signs egging each other up to begin, across the unconscious boy who took no notice at all. It was Mrs. Sandford who spoke the first after all this pantomime. She gave her husband an upbraiding look as much as to say that he always pushed her to the front when anything disagreeable had to be done. Not that it was in reality anything disagreeable, but only exciting and full of new possibilities. She laid down her large pins with the knitting upon her lap, and cleared her throat finally, and said, ‘John.’ It had to be repeated a second time in a slightly raised voice, and with a touch of her hand upon his arm before he paid any attention. Then the boy roused up suddenly, gave himself a little shake, pushed his ‘Robinson Crusoe’ away from him on the table, and turning round, said, briskly, ‘Yes, grandmamma,’ coming back in a moment out of his dreams. ‘We want to speak to you, my dear,’ the old lady said. She put her hand on his arm again, and patted it softly. He sat, as a matter of fact, on his grandmother’s side, not exactly in the middle; nearer to her than to the old gentleman, who had long observed the circumstance not without a little kind of jealousy, but had never taken any notice.