a splendid skeleton at the hospital that I long to be at. If it were not for Stoneborough, it would be all very well; but, if I should get on ever so well at the examinations, it all ends there! I must come back, and go racing about this miserable circuit, just like your gold pheasant rampaging in his cage, seeing the same stupid people all my days.'
'I think,' said Meta, in a low, heartfelt voice, 'it is a noble, beautiful thing to curb down your ambition for such causes. Tom, I like you for it.'
The glance of those beautiful eyes was worth having. Tom coloured a little, but assumed his usual gruffness. 'I can't bear sick people,' he said.
'It has always seemed to me,' said Meta, 'that few lives could come up to Dr. May's. Think of going about, always watched for with hope, often bringing gladness and relief; if nothing else, comfort and kindness, his whole business doing good.'
'One is paid for it,' said Tom.
'Nothing could ever repay Dr. May,' said Meta. 'Can any one feel the fee anything but a mere form? Besides, think of the numbers and numbers that he takes nothing from; and oh! to how many he has brought the most real good, when they would have shut their doors against it in any other form! Oh, Tom, I think none of you guess how every one feels about your father. I recollect one poor woman saying, after he had attended her brother, 'He could not save his body, but, surely, ma'am, I think he was the saving of his soul.''
'It is of no use to talk of my being like my father,' said Tom.
Meta thought perhaps not, but she was full of admiration of his generosity, and said, 'You will make it the same work of love, and charity is the true glory.'
Any inroad on Tom's reserved and depressed nature was a benefit; and he was of an age to be susceptible of the sympathy of one so pretty and so engaging. He had never been so much gratified or encouraged, and, wishing to prolong the tete-a-tete, he chose to take the short cut through the fir-plantations, unfrequented on account of the perpendicular, spiked railings that divided it from the lane.
Meta was humming-bird enough to be undismayed. She put hand and foot wherever he desired, flattered him by letting him handily help her up, and bounded light as a feather down on the other side, congratulating herself on the change from the dusty lane to the whispering pine woods, between which wound the dark path, bestrewn with brown slippery needle-leaves, and edged with the delicate feathering ling and tufts of soft grass.
Tom had miscalculated the chances of interruption. Meta was lingering to track the royal highway of some giant ants to their fir- leaf hillock, when they were hailed from behind, and her squire felt ferocious at the sight of Norman and Harry closing the perspective of fir-trunks.
'Hallo! Tom, what a guide you are!' exclaimed Norman. 'That fence which even Ethel and Mary avoid!'
'Mary climbs like a cow, and Ethel like a father-long-legs,' said Tom. 'Now Meta flies like a bird.'
'And Tom helped me so cleverly,' said Meta. 'It was an excellent move, to get into the shade and this delicious pine tree fragrance.'
'Halt!' said Norman--'this is too fast for Meta.'
'I cannot,' said Harry. 'I must get there in time to set Dr. Spencer's tackle to rights. He is tolerably knowing about knots, but there is a dodge beyond him. Come on, Tom.'
He drew on the reluctant Etonian, who looked repiningly back at the increasing distance between him and the other pair, till a turn in the path cut off his view.
'I am afraid you do not know what you have undertaken,' said Norman.
'I am a capital walker. And I know, or do not know, how often Ethel takes the same walk.'
'Ethel is no rule.'
'She ought to be,' said Meta. 'To be like her has always been my ambition.'
'Circumstances have formed Ethel.'
'Circumstances! What an ambiguous word! Either Providence pointing to duty, or the world drawing us from it.'
'Stepping-stones, or stumbling-blocks.'
'And, oh! the difficult question, when to bend them, or to bend to them!'
'There must be always some guiding,' said Norman.
'I believe there is,' said Meta, 'but when trumpet-peals are ringing around, it is hard to know whether one is really 'waiting beside the tent,' or only dawdling.'
'It is great self-denial in the immovable square not to join the charge,' said Norman.
'Yes; but they, being shot at, are not deceiving themselves.'
'I suppose self-deception on those points is very common.'
'Especially among young ladies,' said Meta. 'I hear so much of what girls would do, if they might, or could, that I long to see them like Ethel--do what they can. And then it strikes me that I am doing the same, living wilfully in indulgence, and putting my trust in my own misgivings and discontent.'
'I should have thought that discontent had as little to do with you as with any living creature.'
'You don't know how I could growl!' said Meta, laughing. 'Though less from having anything to complain of, than from having nothing to complain of.'
'You mean,' he said, pausing, with a seriousness and hesitation that startled her--'do you mean that this is not the course of life that you would choose?'
A sort of bashfulness made her put her answer playfully--
'All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.
'Toys have a kindly mission, and I may be good for nothing else; but I would have rather been a coffee-pot than a china shepherdess.'
The gaiety disconcerted him, and he seemed to try to be silent, or to reply in the same tone, but he could not help returning to the subject. 'Then you find no charm in the refinements to which you have been brought up?'
'Only too much,' said Meta.
He was silent, and fearing to have added to his fine-lady impression, she resumed. 'I mean that I never could dislike anything, and kindness gives these things a soul; but, of course, I should be better satisfied, if I lived harder, and had work to do.'
'Meta!' he exclaimed, 'you tempt me very much! Would you? --No, it is too unreasonable. Would you share-- share the work that I have undertaken?'
He turned aside and leaned against a tree, as if not daring to watch the effect of the agitated words that had broken from him. She had little imagined whither his last sayings had been tending, and stood still, breathless with the surprise.
'Forgive me,' he said hastily. 'It was very wrong. I never meant to have vexed you by the betrayal of my vain affection.'
He seemed to be going, and this roused her. 'Stay, Norman,' exclaimed she. 'Why should it vex me? I should like it very much indeed.'
He faced suddenly towards her-- 'Meta, Meta! is it possible? Do you know what you are saying?'
'I think I do.'
'You must understand me,' said Norman, striving to speak calmly. 'You have been--words will not express what you have been to me for years past, but I thought you too far beyond my hopes. I knew I ought to be removed from you--I believed that those who are debarred from earthly happiness are marked for especial tasks. I never intended you to know what actuated me, and now the work is undertaken, and-- and I cannot turn back,' he added quickly, as if fearing himself.
'No indeed,' was her steady reply.
'Then I may believe it!' cried Norman. 'You do--you will--you deliberately choose to share it with me?'
'I will try not to be a weight on you,' answered the young girl, with a sweet mixture of resolution and humility. 'It would be the greatest possible privilege. I really do not think I am a fine lady ingrain, and you will teach me not to be too unworthy.'
'I? Oh, Meta, you know not what I am! Yet with you, with you to inspire, to strengthen, to cheer--Meta, Meta, life is so much changed before me, that I cannot understand it yet--after the long dreary hopelessness--'
'I can't think why--' Meta had half said, when feminine dignity checked the words, consciousness and confusion suddenly assailed her, dyed her cheeks crimson, and stifled her voice.
It was the same with Norman, and bashfulness making a sudden prey of both--on they went under its
