had wandered about the lanes of Guestwick as his only
amusement, and had composed hundreds of rhymes in
honour of Lily Dale which no human eye but his own
had ever seen, he had come to regard himself as almost
a burden upon the earth. Nobody seemed to want
him. His own mother was very anxious; but her
anxiety seemed to him to indicate a continual desire
to get rid of him. For hours upon hours he would
fill his mind with castles in the air, dreaming of
wonderful successes in the midst of which Lily Dale
always reigned as a queen. He would carry on the
same story in his imagination from month to month,
almost contenting himself with such ideal happiness.
Had it not been for the possession of that power,
what comfort could there have been to him in his life?
There are lads of seventeen who can find happiness
in study, who can busy themselves in books and be
at their ease among the creations of other minds.
These are they who afterwards become well-informed
men. It was not so with John Eames. He had
never been studious. The perusal of a novel was
to him in those days a slow affair; and of poetry he
read but little, storing up accurately in his memory
all that he did read. But he created for himself
his own romance, though to the eye a most unromantic
youth; and he wandered through the Guestwick woods
with many thoughts of which they who knew him best
knew nothing. All this he thought of now as,
with devious steps, he made his way towards his old
home,—with very devious steps, for he went
backwards through the woods by a narrow path which
led right away from the town down to a little water-course,
over which stood a wooden foot-bridge with a rail.
He stood on the centre of the plank, at a spot which
he knew well, and rubbing his hand upon the rail,
cleaned it for the space of a few inches of the vegetable
growth produced by the spray of the water. There,
rudely carved in the wood, was still the word LILY.
When he cut those letters she had been almost a child.
“I wonder whether she will come here with me
and let me show it to her,” he said to himself.
Then he took out his knife and cleared the cuttings
of the letters, and having done so, leaned upon the
rail, and looked down upon the running water.
How well things in the world had gone for him!
How well! And yet what would it all be if Lily
would not come to him? How well the world had
gone for him! In those days when he stood there
carving the girl’s name everybody had seemed
to regard him as a heavy burden, and he had so regarded
himself. Now he was envied by many, respected
by many, taken by the hand as a friend by those high
in the world’s esteem. When he had come
near the Guestwick Mansion in his old walks,—always,
however, keeping at a great distance lest the grumpy
old lord should be down upon him and scold him,—he
had little dreamed that he and the grumpy old lord
would ever be together on such familiar terms, that
he would tell to that lord more of his private thoughts