The enclosure was returned by Mr. Costigan, who
begged that all correspondence might end; and after one or two further
attempts of the lad's, Captain Costigan insisted that their
acquaintance should cease. He cut Pen in the street. As Arthur and
Foker were pacing the street one day they came upon the daughter on her
father's arm. She passed without any nod of recognition. Foker felt
poor Pen trembling on his arm.
His uncle wanted him to travel, and his mother urged him, too, for he was
in a state of restless unhappiness. But he said point blank he would not
go, and his mother was too fond, and his uncle too wise, to force him.
Whenever Miss Fotheringay acted, he rode over to the Chatteris theatre
and saw her; and between times found the life at Fair-Oaks extremely
dreary and uninteresting. He sometimes played backgammon with his mother,
or took dinner with Dr. Portman or some other neighbour; these were the
chief of his pleasures; or he would listen to his mother's simple music
of summer evenings. But he was very restless and wretched in spite of
all. By the pond and under a tree, which was his favourite resort in
moods of depression, Pen, at that time, composed a number of poems
suitable to his misery--over which verses he blushed in after days,
wondering how he could have ever invented such rubbish.
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