Algiers, you remember, and Turkey, and New Orleans, and Lisbon, and
Naples? and now, when I was done only eight years ago at home, here
I am to be done again, where, I am sure, it all looks clean enough
and healthy! It makes me ill, and I _won't_ be done; laid up for a
week and lose all the fun I came for!"
"Bovey, though you _are_ the strongest fellow in England, you're no
less a coward!"
Young Clarges looked up as he spoke, seriously: "_I_ shall be done!"
"You? Well, so I should expect from a baby like you, Arthur! You
will never grow up, never learn to think for yourself! Now let me
alone on the subject, and let us look up this country place we were
told about!" But Clarges was not easily silenced.
"Think of Lady Violet, Bovey! If anything were to happen to you out
here, and the children, Bovey,--Rex and Florence, you know!"
"Oh! cut it, now, Arthur; I tell you it's of no use!"
Young Clarges looked out across the river, and bit the tiny yellow
moustache. "Then I won't be done, either!" said he to himself.
"It's borne in upon me that one of us has got to get this accursed
thing, and if I can prevent it, it shan't be Bovey!" What a strange
scene it was beneath, around, above and opposite them! Beneath
flowed the river, solid with sawdust, the yellow accumulation of
which sent up a strong resinous smell that almost made them giddy;
to the left the tumultuous foam of the Chaudiere cast a delicate
veil of spray over the sharp outlines of the bridge traced against a
yellow sky; to the right, the water stretched away in a dull gray
expanse, bordered by grim pines and flat sterile country. Around
them the three mighty cliffs on which the Capital is built, above
them the cold gray of an autumnal sky, and opposite them the long
undulations of purplish brown hills that break the monotony of the
view, and beyond which stretch away to an untrodden north the wastes
and forests of an uncleared continent.
"Are we looking due north, now, Arthur, do you know?"
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