No way save one, and Rocket surely must have felt the throbbing of Hugh's heart as that one way flashed upon him, for he gave a kind of coaxing whine, and dashed on over the billowy drifts faster than before.
"No, Rocket, no," and Hugh patted his glossy neck.

He'd never part with Rocket, never.

He'd sell Spring Bank first with all its incumbrances.
It was now three days since Hugh had gladdened Aunt Eunice's cottage with the sunshine of his presence, and when she awoke that morning, and saw how high the snow was piled around her door, she said to herself, "The boy'll be here directly to know if I'm alive," and this accounted for the round deal table drawn so cozily before the blazing fire, and looking so inviting with its two plates and cups, one a fancy china affair, sacredly kept for Hugh, whose coffee always tasted better when sipped from its gilded side, the lightest of egg bread was steaming on the hearth, the tenderest of steak was broiling on the griddle, while the odor of the coffee boiling on the coals came tantalizingly to Hugh's olfactories as Aunt Eunice opened the door, saying pleasantly: "I told 'em so.

I felt it in my bones, and the breakfast is all but ready.

Put Rocket up directly, and come in to the fire." Fastening Rocket in his accustomed place in the outer shed, Hugh stamped the snow from his heavy boots, and then went in to Aunt Eunice's cheerful kitchen-parlor, as she called it, where the tempting breakfast stood upon the table.
"No coffee! What new freak is that ?" and Aunt Eunice gazed at him in astonishment as he declined the cup she had prepared with so much care, dropping in the whitest lumps of sugar, and stirring in the thickest cream.
It cost Hugh a terrible struggle to refuse that cup of coffee, but if he would retrench, he must begin at once, and determining to meet it unflinchingly he replied that "he had concluded to drink water for a while, and see what that would do; much was said nowadays about coffee being injurious, and he presumed it was." "There's something on your mind," she said, observing his abstraction.
"Have you had another dunning letter, or what ?" Aunt Eunice had made a commencement, and in his usual impulsive way Hugh began by asking if "she ever knew him tell a lie ?" No, Aunt Eunice never did.