"
"That poor worm!" Mark scoffed.
"Mark, he's dead," Aunt Helen gasped. "You mustn't speak of him like
that."
"Get out of the room and go to bed," Uncle Henry shouted.
Mark retired with offensive alacrity, and while he was undressing he
wondered drearily why he had made himself so conspicuous on this Sunday
evening out of so many Sunday evenings. What did it matter whether he
were confirmed or not? What did anything matter except to get through
the next year and be finished with Haverton House?
He was more sullen than ever during the week, but on Saturday he had the
satisfaction of bowling Mr. Palmer in the first innings of a match and
in the second innings of hitting him on the jaw with a rising ball.
The next day he rose at five o'clock on a glorious morning in early June
and walked rapidly away from Slowbridge. By ten o'clock he had reached a
country of rolling beech-woods, and turning aside from the high road he
wandered over the bare nutbrown soil that gave the glossy leaves high
above a green unparagoned, a green so lambent that the glimpses of the
sky beyond seemed opaque as turquoises amongst it. In quick succession
Mark saw a squirrel, a woodpecker, and a jay, creatures so perfectly
expressive of the place, that they appeared to him more like visions
than natural objects; and when they were gone he stood with beating
heart in silence as if in a moment the trees should fly like
woodpeckers, the sky flash and flutter its blue like a jay's wing, and
the very earth leap like a squirrel for his amazement.
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