The Trial | Page 6

Richard.
'That is what I was thinking. He was about all yesterday afternoon with
Leonard Ward, and perhaps may have done something imprudent in the
damp. I never know what to do. I can't bear him to be a coddle; yet he
is always catching cold if I let him alone. The question is, whether it is
worse for him to run risks, or to be thinking of himself.'
'He need not be doing that,' said Richard; 'he may be thinking of your
wishes and papa's.'
'Very pretty of him and you, Ritchie; but he is not three parts of a boy
or man who thinks of his womankind's wishes when there is anything
spirited before him.'
'Well, I suppose one may do one's duty without being three parts of a
boy,' said Richard, gravely.
'I know it is true that some of the most saintly characters have been the
more spiritual because their animal frame was less vigorous; but still it
does not content me.'
'No, the higher the power, the better, of course, should the service be. I
was only putting you in mind that there is compensation. But I must be
off. I am sorry I cannot wait for papa. Let me know what is the matter
to-morrow, and how Aubrey is.'
Richard went; and the sisters took up their employments--Ethel writing
to the New Zealand sister-in-law her history of the wedding, Mary
copying parts of a New Zealand letter for her brother, the lieutenant in
command of a gun-boat on the Chinese coast. Those letters, whether
from Norman May or his wife, were very delightful, they were so full
of a cheerful tone of trustful exertion and resolution, though there had
been perhaps more than the natural amount of disappointments.

Norman's powers were not thought of the description calculated for
regular mission work, and some of the chief aspirations of the young
couple had had to be relinquished at the voice of authority without a
trial. They had received the charge of persons as much in need of them
as unreclaimed savages, but to whom there was less apparent glory in
ministering. A widespread district of very colonial colonists, and the
charge of a college for their uncultivated sons, was quite as
troublesome as the most ardent self-devotion could desire; and the
hardships and disagreeables, though severe, made no figure in
history--nay, it required ingenuity to gather their existence from Meta's
bright letters, although, from Mrs. Arnott's accounts, it was clear that
the wife took a quadruple share. Mrs. Rivers had been heard to say that
Norman need not have gone so far, and sacrificed so much, to obtain an
under-bred English congregation; and even the Doctor had sighed once
or twice at having relinquished his favourite son to what was dull and
distasteful; but Ethel could trust that this unmurmuring acceptance of
the less striking career, might be another step in the discipline of her
brother's ardent and ambitious nature. It is a great thing to sacrifice, but
a greater to consent not to sacrifice in one's own way.
Ethel sat up for her father, and Mary would not go to bed and leave her,
so the two sisters waited till they heard the latch-key. Ethel ran out, but
her father was already on the stairs, and waved her back.
'Here is some tea. Are you not coming, papa?--it is all here.'
'Thank you, I'll just go and take off this coat;' and he passed on to his
room.
'I don't like that,' said Ethel, returning to the drawing-room, where
Mary was boiling up the kettle, and kneeling down to make some toast.
'Why, what's the matter?'
'I have never known him go and change his coat but when some
infectious thing has been about. Besides, he did not wait to let me help
him off with it.'

In a few seconds the Doctor came down in his dressing-gown, and let
himself be put into his easy-chair; his two daughters waiting on him
with fond assiduity, their eyes questioning his fagged weary face, but
reading there fatigue and concern that made them--rather awe-
struck--bide their time till it should suit him to speak. Mary was afraid
he would wait till she was gone; dear old Mary, who at twenty- two
never dreamt of regarding herself as on the same footing with her three
years' senior, and had her toast been browner, would have relieved
them of her presence at once. However, her father spoke after his first
long draught of tea.
'Well! How true it is that judgments are upon us while we are marrying
and giving in marriage!'
'What is it, papa? Not the scarlatina?'
'Scarlatina, indeed!' he said contemptuously. 'Scarlet fever in the most
aggravated form. Two deaths in one house, and I am much