CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
OUR SILVER MINE.
School life has been so often narrated, that I am going to skip over mine, and make one stride from our return after Midsummer to Christmas, when we all went back home in a very different frame of mind.
The country looked very different to when we saw it last, but it was a mild balmy winter, with primroses and cuckoo-pints pushing in the valleys, and here and there a celandine pretending that spring had come.
The roads were dirty, but we thought little about them, for we knew that the sea-shore was always the same, and, if anything, more interesting in winter than in summer.
I was all eagerness to get home and see what had been done in the Gap, for my father in his rare letters had said very little about it.
Bigley was equally eager too.

Six months had made a good deal of difference in him, for, young as he was, he seemed to be more manly and firm-looking, though to talk to he was just as boyish as ever, and never happier than when he was playing at some game.
He, too, was ready enough to talk about the Gap, and wonder what had been done.
"I hope your father has made friends with mine," he kept on saying as we drew nearer home.

"It will be so awkward if they are out when you and I want to be in.

Because we do, don't we ?" "Why, of course," I cried.

"And it will be so awkward, won't it ?" "No," I said stoutly, "it won't make any difference; you and I are not going to fall out, so why should we worry about it?
I say, look at Bob Chowne!" Bigley turned, and there he was once more seated upon his box, right up on the big knot of the cord, just as if he liked to make himself uncomfortable.