Come! you like waltzing, and all that sort of thing, you know." The lad shook himself peevishly; a sullen cloud over his fair, picturesque, boyish face.
"Let me alone before the fellows," he muttered impatiently.

"I won't come, I tell you." "Soit!" Cecil shrugged his shoulders, left the window, found the Lelas' cashmere, and sauntered back to the drags without any more expostulation.

The sweetness of his temper could never be annoyed, but also he never troubled himself to utter useless words.

Moreover, he had never been in is life much in earnest about anything; it was not worth while.
"A pretty fellow I am to turn preacher, when I have sins enough on my own shoulders for twenty," he thought; as he shook the ribbons and started the leaders off to the gay music of Laura Lelas' champagne-tuned laughter.
The thoughts that had crossed his mind when he had looked on his brother's inanimate form had not been wholly forgotten since; he felt something like self-accusation whenever he saw, in some gray summer dawn, as he had seen now, the boy's bright face, haggard and pale with the premature miseries of the gamester, or heard his half-piteous, half-querulous lamentations over his losses; and he would essay, with all the consummate tact the world had taught him, to persuade him from his recklessness, and warn him of the consequences.

But little Berk, though he loved his elder after a fashion, was wayward, selfish, and unstable as water.