There had been something about the fat, good-natured, sensible old man, which had cheered him, in spite of his sorrow.

"Pheasants for dinner are rubbish,--mere rubbish," he said to himself, over and over again, as he went along the road; and they were the first words which he spoke to his mother, after entering the house.
"I wish we had some of that sort of rubbish," said she.
"So you will, to-morrow"; and then he described to her his interview.
"The earl was, at any rate, quite right about lying upon the ground.
I wonder you can be so foolish.

And he is right about your poor father too.

But you have got to change your boots; and we shall be ready for dinner almost immediately." But Johnny Eames, before he sat down to dinner, did write his letter to Amelia, and did go out to post it with his own hands,--much to his mother's annoyance.

But the letter would not get itself written in that strong and appropriate language which had come to him as he was roaming through the woods.