Livro The Athelings, Or, the Three Gifts

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Charlie's Preparations. Charlie Atheling was not at all of an imaginative or fanciful turn of mind. His slumbers were not disturbed by castle-building?he wasted none of bis available time in making fancy sketches of the people, or the circumstances, among which he was likely to be thrown.

He was not without the power of comprehending at a glance the various features of his mission; but by much the most remarkable point of Charlie's character was his capacity for doing his immediate business, whatever that might be, with undivided attention, and with his full powers.

On this early September morning he neither occupied himself with anticipations of his interview with Miss Anas- tasia, nor his hurried journey. He did not suffer his mind to stray to difficult questions of evidence, nor wander off into speculations concerning what he might have to do when he reached the real scene of his investigation.

What he had to do at the moment he didlike a man, bending upon his serious business all the faculties of his mind, and all the furrows of his brow.

He got up at six o'clock, not because he particularly liked it, but because these early morning hours had become his habitual time for extra work of every kind, and sat upon Hannah's bench in the garden, close by the kitchen door, with the early sun and the early wind playing hide-and-seek among his elf-locks, learning his Italian grammar, as if this was the real business for which he came into the world.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do ?that was Charlie's secret of success. He had only a grammar, a dictionary, and a little New Testament in Italian?and he had not at this moment the slightest ambition to read Dante in the original; but with steady energy he chased those unknown verbs into the deep caverns of his memo...