ABSTRACT
In silence, day by day and month by month, the clouds swept over the Manor-House, and silently the scroll of the years unfolded, revealing little, but hinting many things. Nine times the leaves had fallen since Philip’s accident; and Geoffrey had now shot up into a gawky, good-natured youth, and his parents began to cast about anxiously in their minds to find him a profession. His hearty loathing of the drudgery of office-work made the choice difficult. Geoffrey would have preferred the army, but his father swore a great many oaths, and declared that he was not going to be bled to death by a lot of idle sons who couldn’t live upon their pay. He had had enough of that. Manitoba 80 was bruited (for no congenial work nearer home could be heard of), and this, as an alternative, in case nothing better offered, Geoffrey had come to regard as his destiny. Meanwhile he remained at home, and was understood to be ‘looking out for something.’ The intervals between the times of ‘looking out’ he used to spend in fishing his father’s trout-stream, for this was the delight of his soul.
