moors which lay not many miles from our dirty black town.  But this year, on this very sunshiny morning, he had announced at breakfast that he could not let us go to what we called our moor-home.  He had even added insult to injury by expressing his thankfulness that we were all in good health, so that the change was not a matter of necessity.  I was too indignant to speak, and rushed upstairs into the nursery, where my little sister had also taken refuge.  She was always very gentle and obedient (provokingly so, I thought), and now she sat rocking her doll on her knee in silent sorrow, whilst I stood kicking her chair and grumbling in a tone which it was well the doll could not hear, or rocking would have been of little use.  I took pleasure in trying to make her as angry as myself.  I reminded her how lovely the purple moors were looking at that moment, how sweet heather smelt, and how good bilberries tasted.  I said I thought it was “very hard.”  It wasn’t as if we were always paying visits, as many children did, to their country relations; we had only one treat in the year, and father wanted to take that away.  Not a soul in the town, I said, would be as unfortunate as we were.  The children next door would go somewhere, of course.  So would the little Smiths, and the Browns, and everybody.  Everybody else went to the sea in the autumn; we were contented with the moors, and he wouldn’t even let us go there.  And, at the end of every burst of complaint, I discharged a volley of kicks at the leg of the chair, and wound up with “I can’t think why he can’t!”

“I don’t know,” said my sister, timidly, “but he said something about not affording it, and spending money, and about trade being bad, and he was afraid there would be great distress in the town.”

Oh, these illogical women!  I was furious.  “What on earth has that to do with us?” I shouted at her.  “Father’s a doctor; trade won’t hurt him.  But you are so silly, Minnie, I can’t talk to you.  I only know it’s very hard.  Fancy staying a whole year boxed up in this beastly town!” And I had so worked myself up that I fully believed in the truth of the sentence with which I concluded—­

“There never WAS anything so miserable!”

Minnie said nothing, for my feelings just then were something like those of the dogs who (Dr. Watts tells us)

     “delight
        To bark and bite;”

and perhaps she was afraid of being bitten.  At any rate, she held her tongue; and just then my father came into the room.

The door was open, and he must have heard my last speech as he came along the passage; but he made no remark on it, and only said, “Would any young man here like to go with me to see a patient?”

I went willingly, for I was both tired and half-ashamed of teasing Minnie, and we were soon in the street.  It was a broad and cheerful one, as I said; but before long we left it for a narrower, and then turned off from that into a side street, where the foot-path would only allow us to walk in single file—­a dirty, dark lane, where surely the sun never did shine.