Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/144

 Dull, dispirited,and muddle-headed as I was, smarting from the blows I had received, it was no wonder that I again began to blubber.

Besides it was a wretched feeling to think I was so atrociously wicked that whatever I did and whatever I said made my Heavenly Father snivel, and that it was a mercy my eyes did not drop out of their sockets, my hands grow paralyzed, my tongue wither to the root. Then in my forlorn state I felt a kind of homesickness, I longed fora little love, for a few kind words.

Why had my mother killed herself and left me alone in this world?

This thought brought on another.

"Perhaps," said I to myself, "she did not know the only thing worth living for." I tried not to think of the word "futtering," but my lips uttered it almost against my will. She probably, like myself, did not know this pleasure, and then surely life was not worth a rap.

In fact, was I not the most miserable wreech in the whole school? The boys pestered me because I slept in the matron's room, and