Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/81

Rh Here a strong arm took the luckless knight by the collar, and dragged him not too gently into the house. His castles fell about his ears.

"What's keeping you at all, Henry. I'd be quicker going myself than sending you for anything, idling and streeling about all day. As for you, Mollie Doherty," she said, turning to the child, who still stood at the door, "you better go home and get something to do; and I am sure there's plenty there for you to be busy at."

"I am going to be an artist, mother," the boy said hesitatingly—he felt some doubt of his glory before her angry face—"and marry Mollie."

"Going to be a fiddlestick!" said his mother. "Look at your brothers and sisters all waiting for their dinner while you are messing about in the mud. Go and get something to do."

The boy, robbed of his dreams, fell to work—such work as was unfortunately fated to be his: without time, without constancy, without method, to-day to run messages, to-morrow to drive crows from the corn, another day to hang about the office where his father was employed, hoping