The Vicars Daughter | Page 5

put some strength into me. I felt as
if I did know something worth telling, and I was silent in my turn.
"Certainly," Mr. S. resumed, "whatever is worth talking about is worth
writing about,--though not perhaps in the way it is talked about.
Besides, Mrs. Percivale, my clients want to know more about your
sisters, and little Theodora, or Dorothea, or--what was her name in the
book?"
The end of it was, that I agreed to try to the extent of a dozen pages or
so.

CHAPTER II
.
I TRY.
I hope no one will think I try to write like my father; for that would be
to go against what he always made a great point of,--that nobody
whatever should imitate any other person whatever, but in modesty and

humility allow the seed that God had sown in her to grow. He said all
imitation tended to dwarf and distort the plant, if it even allowed the
seed to germinate at all. So, if I do write like him, it will be because I
cannot help it.
I will just look how "The Seaboard Parish" ends, and perhaps that will
put into my head how I ought to begin. I see my father does mention
that I had then been Mrs. Percivale for many years. Not so very many
though,--five or six, if I remember rightly, and that is three or four
years ago. Yes; I nave been married nine years. I may as well say a
word as to how it came about; and, if Percivale doesn't like it, the
remedy lies in his pen. I shall be far more thankful to have any thing
struck out on suspicion than remain on sufferance.
After our return home from Kilkhaven, my father and mother had a
good many talks about me and Percivale, and sometimes they took
different sides. I will give a shadow of one of these conversations. I
think ladies can write fully as natural talk as gentlemen can, though the
bits between mayn't be so good.
_Mother._--I am afraid, my dear husband [This was my mother's most
solemn mode of addressing my father], "they are too like each other to
make a suitable match."
Father.--I am sorry to learn you consider me so very unlike yourself,
Ethelwyn. I had hoped there was a very strong resemblance indeed, and
that the match had not proved altogether unsuitable.
_Mother._--Just think, though, what would have become of me by this
time, if you had been half as unbelieving a creature as I was. Indeed, I
fear sometimes I am not much better now.
_Father._--I think I am, then; and I know you've done me nothing but
good with your unbelief. It was just because I was of the same sort
precisely that I was able to understand and help you. My circumstances
and education and superior years--
_Mother._--Now, don't plume yourself on that, Harry; for you know
everybody says you look much the younger of the two.
_Father._--I had no idea that everybody was so rude. I repeat, that my
more years, as well as my severer education, had, no doubt, helped me

a little further on before I came to know you; but it was only in virtue
of the doubt in me that I was able to understand and appreciate the
doubt in you.
_Mother._--But then you had at least begun to leave it behind before I
knew you, and so had grown able to help me. And Mr. Percivale does
not seem, by all I can make out, a bit nearer believing in any thing than
poor Wynnie herself.
_Father._--At least, he doesn't fancy he believes when he does not, as
so many do, and consider themselves superior persons in consequence.
I don't know that it would have done you any great harm, Miss
Ethelwyn, to have made my acquaintance when I was in the worst of
my doubts concerning the truth of things. Allow me to tell you that I
was nearer making shipwreck of my faith at a certain period than I ever
was before or have been since.
_Mother._--What period was that?
_Father._--Just the little while when I had lost all hope of ever
marrying you,--unbeliever as you counted yourself.
_Mother._--You don't mean to say you would have ceased to believe in
God, if he hadn't given you your own way?
_Father._--No, my dear. I firmly believe, that, had I never married you,
I should have come in the end to say, "_Thy will be done_," and to
believe that it must be all right, however hard to bear. But, oh, what a
terrible thing it would have been, and what a frightful valley of the
shadow of death I should have had to go through first!
[I know my mother said