“Think? I think there is an almost certainty!” cried the Signor. He became quite excited himself for the sake of his pupil and for his own sake, for the keen intellectual interest he felt in this curious problem as to what Lottie would do. “You must go to-morrow,” he cried, with all the eagerness of a personal interest; “you must not lose a single day.” CHAPTER XVIII. YOUNG PURCELL. Next morning found young Purcell in a state of excitement and nervous agitation still greater than that of the previous night. He had not slept during the natural time for sleep, and in consequence, according to the fashion of youth unaccustomed to watching, had fallen very fast and heavily asleep, out of sheer fatigue in the morning, waking only with an indescribable sense of guilt to hear the bells ringing for the morning service in the Abbey. Such a thing had never happened to him before, and his shame and sense of wrong-doing were more than reason. He jumped up in dismay, but even the most hurried toilet could not get him in time; and his mother appeared at his door as he prepared to rush out half-dressed, preventing his exit. “You wouldn’t go out without your breakfast?” she cried with horror. The virtuous and carefully regulated life of the chorister and musical student trained under the Signor’s eye and his mother’s constant care, had made a late morning and an omitted breakfast seem like something criminal. Besides, a sense of the crisis had got into the air. The Signor had left an anxious message, begging his _protégé_ not to hurry himself, to take his time, and to keep up his courage. His mother kissed him wistfully, and served him with a noble breakfast, as if he wanted strengthening in the most material way, for the important piece of work before him. Even old Pick looked at him with respectful curiosity as at a man on the edge of a very serious step indeed, a curiosity mingled with awe and a little grim humour and admiration. The boy was going to do what Pick had never had the courage to do; and though the old man thought the young one a fool, and hugged himself on his superior wisdom, yet it cannot be denied that he looked with a certain respect on the bold youth who was about to make such a venture. He put his breakfast on the table, not grudging the trouble, though the Signor’s breakfast had long been over, and he shook his head behind Mr. John’s chair. “Take a good breakfast, it will do you a deal of good,” he said, as he left the hero of the occasion. Purcell, though his mother was only the housekeeper, was the son of the house; he took his meals with the master, though it was his mother who prepared their dishes in the kitchen. It was a false position, perhaps, but he had not yet found any trouble in it. He had been a little curly-headed boy in the choir when Mrs. Purcell came first to take charge of the Signor’s house; she had been the sole servant then, and had scrubbed and brushed and cooked, diligently keeping everything in order.