He is still pacing up and down restlessly--to and fro--along and across--he that is usually so innocent of fidget or fuss.

"Nancy," he says, half seriously, half in rueful jest, "if you want a thing done, do it yourself: mind that, all your life.

I am a standing instance of the disadvantage of having let other people do it for me.

The fact is, I ought to have gone out there long ago, to look after things myself." "If you _had_ been there, you could not have stopped the hurricane coming, any more than Canute could stop the waves," say I, filching a piece of history from "Little Arthur," and pushing it to the front.
He smiles.
"Not the hurricane--no; but the hurricane was the lesser evil.

I might have done something to avert, or, at least, lessen the greater one.