“Darling, will you wait for me?” he asked, looking down at her, with eyes brimming over with love.
“Yes, George,” she answered, meekly, quite a transformed Celia, all her pertness and flippancy gone.
“It may be a long while, dear,” he said, gravely; “almost as long as Rachel waited for Jacob.”
“I don’t mind that, provided there is no Leah to come between us.”
“There shall be no Leah.”
So they were engaged, and, in the dim cloudland of the future, Celia saw a vision of Harley Street, a landau, and a pair of handsome grays.
“Doctors generally have grays, don’t they, George?” she asked, presently, apropos to nothing particular.
George’s thoughts had not travelled so far as the carriage and pair stage of his existence, and he did not understand the question.
“Yes, dear, there is a Free Hospital in the Gray’s Inn Road,” he answered, simply, “but I was at Bartlemy’s.”
“Oh, you foolish George, I was thinking of horses, not hospitals. What colour shall you choose when you start your carriage?”
“We’ll talk it over, dearest, when we are going to start the carriage.”
Mr. and Mrs. Treverton heard of the engagement with infinite pleasure, nor did the Vicar or his easy-tempered wife offer any objection.
Before the first year of Celia’s betrothal was over, John Treverton had persuaded the good old village doctor to retire, and to accept a handsome price for his comfortable practice, which covered a district of sixty miles circumference, and offered ample work for an energetic young man. This practice John Treverton gave to George Gerard as a free gift.
“Don’t consider it a favour,” he said, when the surgeon wanted it to be treated as a debt, to be paid out of his future earnings. “The obligation is all on my side. I want a clever young doctor, whom I know and esteem, instead of any charlatan who might happen to succeed our old friend. The advantage is all on my side. You will help me in all my sanitary improvements, and my nursery will be safe in the inevitable season of measles and scarlatina.”
Thus it came to pass that Celia, as well as John Treverton and his wife, was able to say,
“But in some wise all things wear round betimes,
And wind up well.”
Colophon
The Cloven Foot
was published in 1879 by
M. E. Braddon.
This ebook was produced for
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The cover page is adapted from
Danseuses prés d’un portant,
a painting completed in 1880 by
Edgar Degas.
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