'That's not the way great things were done.'
'I don't know, Ethel; I think great things can't be good unless they stand on a sure foundation of little ones.'
'Well, I believe Richard was right, and it would not do to begin on Sunday, but he was so tame; and then my frock, and the horrid deficiency in those little neatnesses.'
'Perhaps that is good for you in one way; you might get very high- flying if you had not the discipline of those little tiresome things, correcting them will help you, and keep your high things trom being all romance. I know dear mamma used to say so; that the trying to conquer them was a help to you. Oh, here's Mary! Mary, will you get Ethel's dressing things? She has come home wet-footed and cold, and has been warming herself by my fire.'
Mary was happy to help, and Ethel was dressed and cheered by the time Dr. May came in, for a hurried visit and report of his doings; Flora followed on her way from her room. Then all went to tea, leaving Margaret to have a visit from the little ones under charge of nurse. Two hours' stay with her, that precious time when she knew that sad as the talk often was, it was truly a comfort to him. It ended when ten o'clock struck, and he went down-- Margaret hearing the bell, the sounds of the assembling servants, the shutting of the door, the stillness of prayer- time, the opening again, the feet moving off in different directions, then brothers and sisters coming in to kiss her and bid her good-night, nurse and Flora arranging her for the night, Flora coming to sleep in her little bed in the corner of the room, and, lastly, her father's tender good-night, and melancholy look at her, and all was quiet, except the low voices and movements as Richard attended him in his own room.
Margaret could think: 'Dear, dear Ethel, how noble and high she is! But I am afraid! It is what people call a difficult, dangerous age, and the grander she is, the greater danger of not managing her rightly. If those high purposes should run only into romance like mine, or grow out into eccentricities and unfemininesses, what a grievous pity it would be! And I, so little older, so much less clever, with just sympathy enough not to be a wise restraint--I am the person who has the responsibility, and oh, what shall I do? Mamma trusted to me to be a mother to them, papa looks to me, and I so unfit, besides this helplessness. But God sent it, and put me in my place. He made me lie here, and will raise me up if it is good, so I trust He will help me with my sisters.'
'Grant me to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in Thy holy comfort.'
CHAPTER VII.
Something between a hindrance and a help. WORDSWORTH.
Etheldred awoke long before time for getting up, and lay pondering over her visions. Margaret had sympathised, and therefore they did not seem entirely aerial. To earn money by writing was her favourite plan, and she called her various romances in turn before her memory, to judge which might be brought down to sober pen and ink. She considered till it became not too unreasonably early to get up. It was dark, but there was a little light close to the window: she had no writing-paper, but she would interline her old exercise-book. Down she ran, and crouching in the school-room window-seat, she wrote on in a trance of eager composition, till Norman called her, as he went to school, to help him to find a book.
This done, she went up to visit Margaret, to tell her the story, and consult her. But this was not so easy. She found Margaret with little Daisy lying by her, and Tom sitting by the fire over his Latin.
'Oh, Ethel, good-morning, dear! you are come just in time.'
'To take baby?' said Ethel, as the child was fretting a little.
'Yes, thank you, she has been very good, but she was tired of lying here, and I can't move her about,' said Margaret.
'Oh, Margaret, I have such a plan,' said Ethel, as she walked about with little Gertrude; but Tom interrupted.
'Margaret, will you see if I can say my lesson?' and the thumbed Latin grammar came across her just as Dr. May's door opened, and he came in exclaiming, 'Latin grammar! Margaret, this is really too much for you. Good- morning, my dears. Ha! Tommy, take your book away, my boy. You must not inflict that on sister now. There's your regular master, Richard, in my room, if it is fit for his ears yet. What, the little one here too?'
'How is your arm, papa?' said Margaret. 'Did it keep you awake?'
'Not long--it set me dreaming though, and a very romantic dream it was, worthy of Ethel herself.'
'What was it, papa?'
'Oh, it was an odd thing, joining on strangely enough with one I had three or four and twenty years ago, when I was a young man, hearing lectures at Edinburgh, and courting--'he stopped, and felt Margaret's pulse, asked her a few questions, and talked to the baby. Ethel longed to hear his dream, but thought he would not like to go on; however, he did presently.
'The old dream was the night after a picnic on Arthur's Seat with the Mackenzies; mamma and Aunt Flora were there. 'Twas a regular boy's dream, a tournament, or something of that nature, where I was victor, the queen--you know who she was--giving me her token--a Daisy Chain.'
'That is why you like to call us your Daisy Chain,' said Ethel.
'Did you write it in verse?' said Margaret. 'I think I once saw some verses like it in her desk.'
'I was in love, and three-and-twenty,' said the doctor, looking drolly guilty in the midst of his sadness. 'Ay, those fixed it in my memory, perhaps my fancy made it more distinct than it really was. An evening or two ago I met with them, and that stirred it up I suppose. Last night came the tournament again, but it was the melee, a sense of being crushed down, suffocated by the throng of armed knights and horses--pain and wounds--and I looked in vain through the opposing overwhelming host for my--my Maggie. Well, I got the worst of it, my sword arm was broken--I fell, was stifled--crushed--in misery--all I could do was to grasp my token--my Daisy Chain,' and he pressed Margaret's hand as he said so. 'And, behold, the tumult and despair were passed. I lay on the grass in the cloisters, and the Daisy Chain hung from the sky, and was drawing me upwards. There--it is a queer dream for a sober old country doctor. I don't know why I told you, don't tell any one again.'
And he walked away, muttering. 'For he told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking,' leaving Margaret with her eyes full of tears, and Ethe1 vehemently caressing the baby.
'How beautiful!' said Ethel.
'It has been a comfort to him, I am sure,' said Margaret.
'You don't think it ominous,' said Ethel with a slight tremulous voice.
'More soothing than anything else. It is what we all feel, is it not? that this little daisy bud is the link between us and heaven?'
'But about him. He was victor at first--vanquished the next time.'
'I think--if it is to have an interpretation, though I am not sure we ought to take it so seriously, it would only mean that in younger days people care for victory and distinction in this world, like Norman, or as papa most likely did then; but, as they grow older, they care less, and others pass them, and they know it does not signify, for in our race all may win.'
'But he has a great name. How many people come from a distance to consult him! he is looked upon, too, in other ways! he can do anything with the corporation.'
Margaret smiled. 'All this does not sound grand--it is not as if he had set up in London.'
'Oh, dear, I am so glad he did not.'
'Shall I tell you what mamma told me he said about it, when Uncle Mackenzie said he ought? He answered that he thought health and happy home attachments were a better provision for us to set out in life with than thousands.'
'I am sure he was right!' said Ethel earnestly. 'Then you don't think the dream meant being beaten, only that our best things are not gained by successes in this world?'
'Don't go and let it dwell on your mind as a vision,' said Margaret. 'I think dear mamma would call that silly.'
An interruption occurred, and Ethel had to go down to breakfast with a mind floating between romance, sorrow, and high aspirations, very unlike the actual world she had to live in. First, there was a sick man walking into the study, and her father, laying down his letters, saying, 'I must despatch him before prayers, I suppose. I've a great mind to say I never will see any one who won't keep to my days.'
'I can't imagine why they don't,' said Flora, as he went. 'He is always saying so, but never acting on it. If he would once turn one away, the rest would mind.'
