The Adventures of Don Lavington | Page 5

hand
to pour out some tea, but it was pushed aside indignantly, and the little
woman busily, but with a great show of indignation, filled and
sweetened her husband's cup, which she dabbed down before him,
talking all the while, and finishing with,--
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jem."
"I am," he grumbled. "Ashamed that I was ever such a stupid as to
marry a girl who's always dissatisfied. Nice home you make me."
"And a nice home you make me, sir; and don't eat your victuals so fast.
It's like being at the wild beast show."
"That's right; go on," grumbled Jem, doubling his rate of consumption.
"Grudge me my meals now. Good job if we could undo it all, and be as
we was."
"I wish we could," cried the little woman, whose eyes seemed to say
that her lips were not telling the truth.

"So do I," cried Jem, tossing off his third cup of tea; and then to his
little wife's astonishment he took a thick slice of bread and butter in
each hand, clapped them together as if they were cymbals, rose from
the table and put on his hat.
"Where are you going, Jem?"
"Out."
"What for?"
"To eat my bread and butter down on the quay."
"But why, Jem?"
"'Cause there's peace and quietness there."
Bang! Went the door, and little Mrs Wimble stood gazing at it angrily
for a few moments before sitting down and having what she called "a
good cry," after which she rose, wiped her eyes, and put away the tea
things without partaking of any herself.
"Poor Jem!" she said softly; "I'm afraid I'm very unkind to him
sometimes."
Just at that moment Jem was sitting on an empty cask, eating his bread
and butter, and watching a boat manned by blue-jackets going off to the
sloop of war lying out toward the channel, and flying her colours in the
evening breeze.
"Poor little Sally!" he said to himself. "We don't seem to get on
somehow, and I'm afraid I'm a bit rough to her; but knives and scissors!
What a temper she have got."
Meanwhile, in anything but a pleasant frame of mind, Don had gone
home to find that the tea was ready, and that he was being treated as a
laggard.
"Come, Lindon," said his uncle quietly, "you have kept us waiting

some time."
The lad glanced quickly round the well-furnished room, bright with
curiosities brought in many a voyage from the west, and with the
poison of Mike's words still at work, he wondered how much of what
he saw rightfully belonged to him.
The next moment his eyes lit on the soft sweet troubled face of his
mother, full of appeal and reproach, and it seemed to Don that his uncle
had been upsetting her by an account of his delinquencies.
"It's top bad, and I don't deserve it," he said to himself. "Everything
seems to go wrong now. Well, what are you looking at?" he added, to
himself, as he took his seat and stared across at his cousin, the playmate
of many years, whose quiet little womanly face seemed to repeat her
father's grave, reproachful look, but who, as it were, snatched her eyes
away as soon as she met his gaze.
"They all hate me," thought Don, who was in that unhappy stage of a
boy's life when help is so much needed to keep him from turning down
one of the dark side lanes of the great main route.
"Been for a walk, Don?" said his mother with a tender look.
"No, mother, I only stopped back in the yard a little while."
His uncle set down his cup sharply.
"You have not been keeping that scoundrel Bannock?" he cried.
"No, sir; I've been talking to Jem."
"Ho!" ejaculated the old merchant. "That's better. But you might have
come straight home."
Don's eyes encountered his Cousin Kitty's just then, as she gave her
head a shake to throw back the brown curls which clustered about her
white forehead.

She turned her gaze upon her plate, and he could see that she was
frowning.
"Yes," thought Don, "they all dislike me, and I'm only a worry and
trouble to my mother. I wish I was far away--anywhere."
He went on with his tea moodily and in silence, paying no heed to the
reproachful glances of his mother's eyes, which seemed to him to say,
and with some reason, "Don't be sulky, Don, my boy; try and behave as
I could wish."
"It's of no use to try," he said to himself; and the meal passed off very
silently, and with a cold chill on every one present.
"I'm very sorry, Laura," said her brother, as soon as Don had left the