"Well, I couldn't help it. My head was so heavy." "Yes," sighed Mrs Dean, "his head always was very heavy, poor boy. He goes to sleep at such strange times too, sir." "Well, don't tell him that, mother," cried Esau. "You tell everybody." "Well, dear, there's no harm in it. I never said it was your fault. Lots of times, Master Gordon, I've known him go to sleep when at play, and once I found him quite fast with his mouth full of bread and butter." "Such stuff!" grumbled Esau, angrily. "It is quite true, Master Gordon. He always was a drowsy boy." "Make anybody drowsy to keep on writing lots and figures," grumbled Esau. "Heigho--ha--hum!" he yawned. "I shan't be very long before I go to bed." He kept his word, and I took a book and sat down by the little fire to read; but though I kept on turning over the pages, I did not follow the text; for I was either thinking about Mrs Dean's needle as it darted in and out of the stuff she was sewing, or else about Mr John Dempster and our meeting that day--of how I had promised to go up and see him on Sunday, and how different he was to his cousin. The time must have gone fast, for when the clock began to strike, it went on up to ten; and I was thinking it was impossible that it could be so late, when I happened to glance across at little Mrs Dean, whose work had dropped into her lap, and she was as fast asleep then as her son had been at the office hours before. CHAPTER THREE. MY NEW FRIENDS. Poor Esau and I had had a hard time at the office, for it seemed that my patient forbearing way of receiving all the fault-finding made Mr Dempster go home at night to invent unpleasant things to say, till, as I had listened, it had seemed as if my blood boiled, and a hot sensation came into my throat. All this had greatly increased by the Saturday afternoon, and had set me thinking that there was something in what Esau said, and that I should be better anywhere than where I was. But on the Sunday afternoon, as I walked up the sunny road to Kentish Town, and turned down a side street of small old-looking houses, each with its bit of garden and flowers, everything looked so bright and pleasant, even there, that my spirits began to rise; and all the more from the fact that at one of the cottage-like places with its porch and flowers, there were three cages outside, two of whose inmates, a lark and a canary, were singing loudly and making the place ring. It is curious how a musical sound takes one back to the past. In an instant as I walked on, I was seeing the bright river down at home, with the boat gliding along, the roach and dace flashing away to right and left, the chub scurrying from under the willows, the water-weeds and white buttercups brushing against the sides, and the lark singing high overhead in the blue sky.