Look!" I continued mentally--"Look at the sooty smoke in that hollow, and know that there is your post! There you cannot dream, you cannot speculate and theorize--there you shall out and work!" Thus self-schooled, I returned to the house.

My brother was in the breakfast-room.

I met him collectedly--I could not meet him cheerfully; he was standing on the rug, his back to the fire--how much did I read in the expression of his eye as my glance encountered his, when I advanced to bid him good morning; how much that was contradictory to my nature! He said "Good morning" abruptly and nodded, and then he snatched, rather than took, a newspaper from the table, and began to read it with the air of a master who seizes a pretext to escape the bore of conversing with an underling.

It was well I had taken a resolution to endure for a time, or his manner would have gone far to render insupportable the disgust I had just been endeavouring to subdue.

I looked at him: I measured his robust frame and powerful proportions; I saw my own reflection in the mirror over the mantel-piece; I amused myself with comparing the two pictures.