“Made it steady! No, Mary, that is saying too much for it,” said Mr. Ernescliffe.
“It has no harm in it—capital horse—splendid,” said the doctor; “I shall take you out with it this afternoon, Maggie.”
“You have driven it several times?” said Alan.
“Yes, I drove him to Abbotstoke yesterday—never started, except at a fool of a woman with an umbrella, and at the train—and we’ll take care not to meet that.”
“It is only to avoid the viaduct at half-past four,” said Mrs. May, “and that is easily done.”
“So you are bound for Cocksmoor?” said the doctor. “I told the poor fellow you were going to see his wife, and he was so thankful, that it did one’s heart good.”
“Is he better? I should like to tell his wife,” said Flora.
The doctor screwed up his face. “A bad business,” he said; “he is a shade better to-day; he may get through yet; but he is not my patient. I only saw him because I happened to be there when he was brought in, and Ward was not in the way.”
“And what’s his name?”
“I can’t tell—don’t think I ever heard.”
“We ought to know,” said Miss Winter; “it would be awkward to go without.”
“To go roaming about Cocksmoor asking where the man in the hospital lives!” said Flora. “We can’t wait till Monday.”
“I’ve done,” said Norman; “I’ll run down to the hospital and find out. May I, mamma?”
“Without your pudding, old fellow?”
“I don’t want pudding,” said Norman, slipping back his chair. “May I, mamma?”
“To be sure you may;” and Norman, with a hand on the back of Ethel’s chair, took a flying leap over his own, that set all the glasses ringing.
“Stop, stop! know what you are going after, sir,” cried his father. “What will they know there of Cocksmoor, or the man whose wife has twins? You must ask for the accident in number five.”
“And oh, Norman, come back in time!” said Ethel.
“I’ll be bound I’m back before Etheldred the Unready wants me,” he answered, bounding off with an elasticity that caused his mother to say the boy was made of india-rubber; and then putting his head in by the window to say, “By-the-bye, if there’s any pudding owing to me, that little chorister fellow of ours, Bill Blake, has got a lot of voracious brothers that want anything that’s going. Tom and Blanche might take it down to ‘em; I’m off! Hooray!” and he scampered headlong up the garden, prolonging his voice into a tremendous shout as he got farther off, leaving every one laughing, and his mother tenderly observing that he was going to run a quarter of a mile and back, and lose his only chance of pudding for the week—old Bishop Whichcote’s rules contemplating no fare but daily mutton, to be bought at a shilling per sheep. A little private discussion ensued between Harry and Hector on the merits of the cakes at Ballhatchet’s gate, and old Nelly’s pies, which led the doctor to mourn over the loss of the tarts of the cranberries, that used to grow on Cocksmoor, before it was inhabited, and to be the delight of the scholars of Stoneborough, when he was one of them—and then to enchant the boys by relations of ancient exploits, especially his friend Spencer climbing up, and engraving a name on the top of the market cross, now no more—swept away by the Town Council in a fit of improvement, which had for the last twenty years enraged the doctor at every remembrance of it. Perhaps at this moment his wife could hardly sympathise, when she thought of her boys emulating such deeds.
“Papa,” said Ethel, “will you lend me a pair of spectacles for the walk?”
“And make yourself one, Ethel,” said Flora.
“I don’t care—I want to see the view.”
“It is very bad for you, Ethel,” further added her mother; “you will make your sight much shorter if you accustom your eyes to them.”
“Well, mamma, I never do wear them about the house.”
“For a very good reason,” said Margaret; “because you haven’t got them.”
“No, I believe Harry stole them in the holidays.”
“Stole them!” said the doctor; “as if they weren’t my property, unjustifiably appropriated by her!”
“They were that pair that you never could keep on, papa,” said Ethel—“no use at all to you. Come, do lend me them.”
“I’m sure I shan’t let you wear them,” said Harry. “I shan’t go, if you choose to make yourself such an object.”
“Ah!” said the father, “the boys thought it time to put a stop to it when it came to a caricature of the little doctor in petticoats.”
“Yes, in Norman’s Lexicon,” said Ethel, “a capital likeness of you, papa; but I never could get him to tell me who drew it.”
Nor did Ethel know that that caricature had been the cause of the black eye that Harry had brought home last summer. Harry returned, to protest that he would not join the walk, if she chose to be seen in the spectacles, while she undauntedly continued her petition, though answered that she would attract the attacks of the quarrymen, who would take her for an attenuated owl.
“I wish you were obliged to go about without them yourself, papa!” cried Ethel, “and then you would know how tiresome it is not to see twice the length of your own nose.”
“Not such a very short allowance either,” said the doctor quaintly, and therewith the dinner concluded. There was apt to be a race between the two eldest girls for the honour of bringing down the baby; but this time their father strode up three steps at once, turned at the top of the first flight, made his bow to them, and presently came down with his little daughter in his arms, nodded triumphantly at the sisters, and set her down on her mother’s lap.
“There, Maggie, you are complete, you old hen-and-chicken daisy. Can’t you take her portrait in the character, Margaret?”
“With her pink cap, and Blanche and Aubrey as they are now, on each side?” said Flora.
“Margaret ought to be in the picture herself,” said Ethel. “Fetch the artist in Norman’s Lexicon, Harry.”
“Since he has hit off one of us so well,” said the doctor. “Well! I’m off. I must see old Southern. You’ll be ready by three? Good-bye, hen and chicken.”
“And I may have the spectacles?” said Ethel, running after him; “you know I am an injured individual, for mamma won’t let me carry baby about the house because I am so blind.”
“You are welcome to embellish yourself, as far as I am concerned.”
A general dispersion ensued, and only Mrs. May, Margaret, and the baby, remained.
“Oh, no!” sighed Margaret; “you can’t be the hen-and-chicken daisy properly, without all your chickens. It is the first christening we ever had without our all being there.”
“It was best not to press it, my dear,” said her mother. “Your papa would have had his thoughts turned to the disappointment again and it makes Richard himself so unhappy to see his vexation, that I believe it is better not to renew it.”
“But to miss him for so long!” said Margaret. “Perhaps it is best, for it is very miserable when papa is sarcastic and sharp, and he cannot understand it, and takes it as meaning so much more than it really does, and grows all the more frightened and diffident. I cannot think what he would do without you to encourage him.”
“Or you, you good sister,” said her mother, smiling. “If we could only teach him not to mind being laughed at, and to have some confidence in himself, he and papa would get on together.”
“It