Doctor Thorne | Page 4

such occasions were gone
through with wondrous eclat. But when the tenth baby, and the ninth
little girl, was brought into the world, the outward show of joy was not
so great.
Then other troubles came. Some of these little girls were sickly, some
very sickly. Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as were
extremely detrimental to her husband's happiness and her own; but that
of being an indifferent mother was not among them. She had worried
her husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament, she had
worried him because he would not furnish his house in Portman Square,
she had worried him because he objected to have more people carried
every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold; but now
she changed her tune and worried him because Selina coughed, because
Helena was hectic, because poor Sophy's spine was weak, and Matilda's
appetite was gone.
Worrying from such causes was pardonable it will be said. So it was;
but the manner was hardly pardonable. Selina's cough was certainly not
fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman Square; nor
would Sophy's spine have been materially benefited by her father
having a seat in Parliament; and yet, to have heard Lady Arabella
discussing those matters in family conclave, one would have thought
that she would have expected such results.

As it was, her poor weak darlings were carried about from London to
Brighton, from Brighton to some German baths, from the German baths
back to Torquay, and thence--as regarded the four we have named--to
that bourne from whence no further journey could be made under Lady
Arabella's directions.
The one son and heir to Greshamsbury was named as his father, Francis
Newbold Gresham. He would have been the hero of our tale had not
that place been pre-occupied by the village doctor. As it is, those who
please may regard him. It is he who is to be our favourite young man,
to do the love scenes, to have his trials and his difficulties, and to win
through them or not, as the case may be. I am too old now to be a
hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not die of a
broken heart. Those who don't approve of a middle-aged bachelor
country doctor as a hero, may take the heir to Greshamsbury in his
stead, and call the book, if it so please them, 'The Loves and
Adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger.'
And Master Frank Gresham was not ill adapted for playing the part of a
hero of this sort. He did not share his sisters' ill-health, and though the
only boy of the family, he excelled all his sisters in personal appearance.
The Greshams from time immemorial had been handsome. They were
broad browed, blue-eyed, fair haired, born with dimples in their chins,
and that pleasant, aristocratic dangerous curl of the upper lip which can
equally express good humour or scorn. Young Frank was every inch a
Gresham, and was the darling of his father's heart.
The De Courcys had never been plain. There was too much hauteur, too
much pride, we may perhaps even fairly say, too much nobility in their
gait and manners, and even in their faces, to allow of their being
considered plain; but they were not a race nurtured by Venus or Apollo.
They were tall and thin, with high cheek-bones, high foreheads, and
large, dignified, cold eyes. The De Courcy girls all had good hair; and,
as they also possessed easy manners and powers of talking, they
managed to pass in the world for beauties till they were absorbed in the
matrimonial market, and the world at large cared no longer whether
they were beauties or not. The Misses Gresham were made in the De

Courcy mould, and were not on this account the less dear to their
mother.
The two eldest, Augusta and Beatrice, lived, and were apparently likely
to live. The four next faded and died one after another--all in the same
sad year--and were laid in the neat, new cemetery at Torquay. Then
came a pair, born at one birth, weak, delicate, frail little flowers, with
dark hair and dark eyes, and thin, long, pale faces, with long, bony
hands, and long bony feet, whom men looked on as fated to follow
their sisters with quick steps. Hitherto, however, they had not followed
them, nor had they suffered as their sisters had suffered; and some
people at Greshamsbury attributed this to the fact that a change had
been made in the family medical practitioner.
Then came the youngest of the flock, she whose birth we have said was
not heralded with loud joy; for when she came into the world, four
others with pale temples,