"Did you? How d'ye know what the candle feels?"
"Oh, I don't know, but I did." And again, after a pause she said—"Oh, I am so glad to be here! It is so pleasant riding here in the open, free, fresh air, crushing out such a good smell from the dewy grass. Papa! are you there? I can't see you."
He rode close up alongside of her: he was not sure but what she might be afraid of riding in the dark shadows, so he laid his hand upon hers.
"Oh! I am so glad to feel you," squeezing his hand hard. "Papa, I should like to get a chain like Ponto's, just as long as your longest round, and then I could fasten us two to each end of it, and when I wanted you I could pull, and if you didn't want to come, you could pull back again; but I should know you knew I wanted you, and we could never lose each other."
"I'm rather lost in that plan of yours; the details, as you state them, are a little puzzling; but if I make them out rightly, I am to go about the country, like the donkeys on the common, with a clog fastened to my hind leg."
"I don't mind your calling me a clog, if only we were fastened together."
"But I do mind you calling me a donkey," he replied.
"I never did. At least I didn't mean to. But it is such a comfort to know that I may be as rude as I like."
"Is that what you've learnt from the grand company you've been keeping to-day? I expected to find you so polite and ceremonious, that I read a few chapters of Sir Charles Grandison, in order to bring myself up to concert pitch."
"Oh, I do hope I shall never be a lord or a lady."
"Well, to comfort you, I'll tell you this: I'm sure you'll never be a lord; and I think the chances are a thousand to one against your ever being the other, in the sense in which you mean."
"I should lose myself every time I had to fetch my bonnet, or else get tired of long passages and great staircases long before I could go out walking."
"But you'd have your lady's-maid, you know."
"Do you know, papa, I think lady's-maids are worse than ladies. I should not mind being a housekeeper so much."
"No! the jam-cupboards and dessert would lie very conveniently to one's hand," replied her father, meditatively. "But Mrs. Brown tells me that the thought of the dinners often keeps her from sleeping; there's that anxiety to be taken into consideration. Still, in every condition of life, there are heavy cares and responsibilities."
"Well! I suppose so," said Molly, gravely. "I know Betty says I wear her life out with the green stains I get in my frocks from sitting in the cherry-tree."
"And Miss Browning said she had fretted herself into a headache with thinking how they had left you behind. I'm afraid you'll be as bad as a bill of fare to them to-night. How did it all happen, goosey?"
"Oh, I went by myself to see the gardens; they are so beautiful! and I lost myself, and sat down to rest under a great tree; and Lady Cuxhaven and that Mrs. Kirkpatrick came; and Mrs. Kirkpatrick brought me some lunch, and then put me to sleep on her bed—and I thought she would waken me in time, and she didn't; and so they'd all gone away; and when they planned for me to stop till to-morrow, I didn't like saying how very, very much I wanted to go home—but I kept thinking how you would wonder where I was."
"Then it was rather a dismal day of pleasure, goosey, eh?"
"Not in the morning. I shall never forget the morning in that garden. But I was never so unhappy in all my life, as I have been all this long afternoon."
Mr. Gibson thought it his duty to ride round by the Towers, and pay a visit of apology and thanks to the family, before they left for London. He found them all on the wing, and no one was sufficiently at liberty to listen to his grateful civilities but Mrs. Kirkpatrick, who, although she was to accompany Lady Cuxhaven, and pay a visit to her former pupil, made leisure enough to receive Mr. Gibson, on behalf of the family; and assured him of her faithful remembrance of his great professional attention to her in former days in the most winning manner.
CHAPTER III.
MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD.
Sixteen years before this time, all Hollingford had been disturbed to its foundations by the intelligence that Mr. Hall, the skilful doctor, who had attended them all their days, was going to take a partner. It was no use reasoning to them on the subject; so Mr. Browning the vicar, Mr. Sheepshanks (Lord Cumnor's agent), and Mr. Hall himself, the masculine reasoners of the little society, left off the attempt, feeling that the Che sarà sarà would prove more silencing to the murmurs than many arguments. Mr. Hall had told his faithful patients that, even with the strongest spectacles, his sight was not to be depended upon; and they might have found out for themselves that his hearing was very defective, although, on this point, he obstinately adhered to his own opinion, and was frequently heard to regret the carelessness of people's communication nowadays, "like writing on blotting-paper, all the words running into each other," he would say. And more than once Mr. Hall had had attacks of a suspicious nature—"rheumatism" he used to call them, but he prescribed for himself as if they had been gout—which had prevented his immediate attention to imperative summonses. But, blind and deaf, and rheumatic as he might be, he was still Mr. Hall the doctor who could heal all their ailments—unless they died meanwhile—and he had no right to speak of growing old, and taking a partner.
He went very steadily to work all the same; advertising in medical journals, reading testimonials, sifting character and qualifications; and just when the elderly maiden ladies of Hollingford thought that they had convinced their contemporary that he was as young as ever, he startled them by bringing his new partner, Mr. Gibson, to call upon them, and began "slyly," as these ladies said, to introduce him into practice. And "who was this Mr. Gibson?" they asked, and echo might answer the question, if she liked, for no one else did. No one ever in all his life knew anything more of his antecedents than the Hollingford people might have found out the first day they saw him: that he was tall, grave, rather handsome than otherwise; thin enough to be called "a very genteel figure," in those days, before muscular Christianity had come into vogue; speaking with a slight Scotch accent; and, as one good lady observed, "so very trite in his conversation," by which she meant sarcastic. As to his birth, parentage, and education—the favourite conjecture of Hollingford society was, that he was the illegitimate son of a Scotch duke, by a Frenchwoman; and the grounds for this conjecture were these:—He spoke with a Scotch accent; therefore, he must be Scotch. He had a very genteel appearance, an elegant figure, and was apt—so his ill-wishers said—to give himself airs; therefore, his father must have been some person of quality; and, that granted, nothing was easier than to run this supposition up all the notes of the scale of the peerage—baronet, baron, viscount, earl, marquis, duke. Higher they dared not go, though one old lady, acquainted with English history, hazarded the remark, that "she believed that one or two of the Stuarts—hem—had not always been—ahem—quite correct in their—conduct; and she fancied such—ahem—things ran in families." But, in popular opinion, Mr. Gibson's father always remained a duke; nothing more.
Then his mother must have been a Frenchwoman, because his hair was so black; and he was so sallow; and because he had been in Paris. All this might be true, or might not; nobody ever knew, or found out anything more about him than what Mr. Hall told them, namely, that his professional qualifications were as high as his moral character, and that both were far above the average, as Mr. Hall had taken pains to ascertain before introducing him to his patients. The popularity of this world is as transient as its glory, as Mr. Hall found out before the first year of his partnership was over. He had plenty of leisure left to him now to nurse his gout and cherish his eyesight. The younger doctor had carried the day; nearly every one sent for Mr. Gibson. Even at the great houses—even at the Towers, that greatest of all, where Mr. Hall had introduced his new partner with fear and trembling,