Mark was very different. The father would order
Saffy away, but the boy might come and go as he pleased, nor give him
any annoyance, although he never or scarcely ever took any notice of
him. He had been told nothing of the cause of his parents' evident
misery. When the news came of Corney's illness, his mother told him of
that; but he had sympathy and penetration enough to perceive that there
must be something amiss more than that: if this were all, they would
have told him of it when first they began to be changed! And when the
news came that he was getting better, his father did not seem the least
happier! He would sometimes stand and gaze at his father, but the
solemn, far-off, starry look of the boy's eyes never seemed to disturb
him. He loved his father as few boys love, and yet had a certain dread
of him and discomfort in his presence, which he could not have accounted
for, and which would vanish at once when he spoke to him. He had never
recovered the effects of being so nearly drowned, and in the readier
apprehension caused by accumulated troubles his mother began to doubt if
ever he would be well again. He had got a good deal thinner; his food
did not seem to nourish him; and his being seemed slipping away from the
hold of the world.
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