He had but lately recovered from a rheumatic fever, and was further held down by frequent attacks of asthma.

Yet the moment one of these went off, the elastic spirits of boyhood enabled him to fling it into the background of his thoughts, and having rested awhile, as he was then doing, he became, according to the account Gladys gave of him at that moment, "just like other boys, only ten times more so!" Emily now alighted, and as they closed about her and hemmed her in, donkey and all, she felt inclined to move her elbows gently, as she had sometimes seen John do, in order to clear a little space about him.

"Why does not Cray come down, too ?" she asked.
"I think he has had enough of the beast," said Barbara, "for yesterday he was trying to make him jump; but the donkey and Cray could not agree about it.

He would not jump, and at last he pitched Cray over his head." "Odd," said Valentine; "that seems a double contradiction to the proverb that 'great wits jump.'" Valentine loved to move off the scene, leaving a joke with his company.

He now drove away, and Johnnie informed Emily that he had already been hard at work that morning.
"I've a right to enjoy mythelf after it," he added, looking round in a patronising manner, "and I have.