"My poor little Willie," he said, "what sad feelings you have allowed to creep into your heart! how unhappy they will make you! You have said very wrong words, my child, and I cannot tell you how much pain you have caused to me and your mamma. I hope that you will be very sorry by-and-by; but you know, Willie, being sorry will not undo your fault, nor take away the envious feelings which you have allowed to spring up within you; and unless such feelings as these are conquered you will be an unhappy little boy, and grow up to be an unhappy man. Willie," he added, after another pause only interrupted by my struggling sobs at longer intervals than at first, "you know, my child, whose strength you will need to help you in the battle: you are but a weak little boy, and cannot help yourself; you must pray for the help of God's Holy Spirit, or else you will never conquer these wrong feelings."
"I trust Aleck knows nothing of all this," resumed my father. "We have promised to care for him as though he belonged to us. I will not allow him to feel that he is disliked by the boy who promised to love him."
"No, papa," I put in, for my temper had well-nigh expended itself; "I do like him still--rather--only not always. I like him very much sometimes: I think now I'm very glad he came--only I don't like his having things that I mayn't have."
"That, Willie," answered my father, "must be left to me to decide. I shall miss my little boy very much this afternoon; but I cannot allow you to come to Stavemoor with me to-day, after all that has passed."
There was just this ray of comfort in the announcement, that at least Aleck would not on this particular occasion gain the object of my ambition.
"Is Aleck to ride my pony, then?" I inquired, half ashamed of myself for asking.
The quick, decided manner, in which my father withdrew the arm he held around me, and answered,--
"Certainly not, unless I find Rickson thinks the gray would be unsafe," made me feel more unhappy than ever; and it was with a sorrowful heart that I obeyed a summons to the school-room brought in at that moment by my cousin, and showed up my incorrect and unfinished sum to Mr. Glengelly.
I suppose that he saw something had gone wrong with me, by my appearance; he was certainly more merciful than usual over my shortcomings in arithmetic, and the lesson-time went by so pleasantly that I was quite in good humour by the time it ended, and went out in restored spirits for the half hour's exercise which preceded our dinner, determining that, the first moment I could see my father, I would tell him I was sorry, revoke what I had said about Aleck, and ride my pony to Stavemoor.