“I have been down to see Mrs. Chiley,” said the Doctor; “she has her rheumatism very bad again; and the horse has been so long out that I thought I would walk home. I think the old lady is a little upset about Cavendish, Lucilla. He was always a pet of hers.”
“Dear Mrs. Chiley! she is not very bad, I hope?” said Miss Marjoribanks.
“Oh, no, she is not very bad,” said the Doctor, in a dreary tone. “The poor old machine is just about breaking up, that is all. We can cobble it this once, but next time perhaps—”
“Don’t talk in such a disheartening way, papa,” said Lucilla. “I am sure she is not so very old.”
“We’re all pretty old, for that matter,” said the Doctor; “we can’t run on forever, you know. If you had been a boy like that stupid fellow Tom, you might have carried on my practice, Lucilla—and even extended it, I shouldn’t wonder,” Dr. Marjoribanks added, with a little grunt, as who should say that is the way of the world.
“But I am not a boy,” said Lucilla mildly; “and even if I had been, you know, I might have chosen another profession. Tom never had any turn for medicine that I ever heard of—”
“I hope you know pretty well about all the turns he ever had with that old—woman,” said the Doctor, pulling himself up sharply, “always at your ear. I suppose she never talks of anything else. But I hope you have too much sense for that sort of thing, Lucilla. Tom will never be anything but a poor man if he were to live a hundred years.”
“Perhaps not, papa,” said Lucilla, with a little sigh. The Doctor knew nothing about the great social experiment which it had entered into Miss Marjoribanks’s mind to make for the regeneration of her contemporaries and the good of society, or possibly he might not have distinguished Tom by that particular title. Was it he, perhaps, who was destined to be the hero of a domestic drama embodying the best principles of that Moral Philosophy which Lucilla had studied with such success at Mount Pleasant? She did not ask herself the question, for things had not as yet come to that point, but it gleamed upon her mind as by a sidelight.
“I don’t know how you would get on if you were poor,” said the Doctor. “I don’t think that would suit you. You would make somebody a capital wife, I can say that for you, Lucilla, that had plenty of money and a liberal disposition like yourself. But poverty is another sort of thing, I can tell you. Luckily you’re old enough to have got over all the love-in-a-cottage ideas—if you ever had them,” Dr. Marjoribanks added. He was a worldly man himself, and he thought his daughter a worldly woman; and yet, though he thoroughly approved of it, he still despised Lucilla a little for her prudence, which is a paradoxical state of mind not very unusual in the world.
“I don’t think I ever had them,” said Lucilla; “not that kind of poverty. I know what a cottage means; it means a wretched man, always about the house with his feet in slippers, you know—what poor dear Mr. Cavendish would come to if he was poor—”
The Doctor laughed, though he had not seemed up to this moment much disposed for laughing. “So that is all your opinion of Cavendish,” he said; “and I don’t think you are far wrong either; and yet that was a young fellow that might have done better,” Dr. Marjoribanks said reflectively, perhaps not without a slight prick of conscience that he had forsaken an old friend.
“Yes,” said Lucilla, with a certain solemnity—“but you know, papa, if a man will not when he may—” And she sighed, though the Doctor, who had not been thinking of Mr. Cavendish’s prospects in that light, laughed once more; but it was a sharp sort of sudden laugh without much heart in it. He had most likely other things of more importance in his mind.
“Well, there have been a great many off and on since that time,” he said, smiling rather grimly. “It is time you were thinking about it seriously, Lucilla. I am not so sure about some things as I once was, and I’d rather like to see you well settled before—It’s a kind of prejudice a man has,” the Doctor said abruptly, which, whatever he might mean by it, was a dismal sort of speech to make.
“Before what, papa?” asked Lucilla, with a little alarm.
“Tut—before long, to be sure,” he said impatiently. “Ashburton would not be at all amiss if he liked it and you liked it; but it’s no use making any suggestions about those things. So long as you don’t marry a fool—” Dr. Marjoribanks said, with energy. “I know—that is, of course, I’ve seen what that is; you can’t expect to get perfection, as you might have looked for perhaps at twenty; but I advise you to marry, Lucilla. I don’t think you are cut out for a single woman, for my part.”
“I don’t see the good of single women,” said Lucilla, “unless they are awfully rich; and I don’t suppose I shall ever be awfully rich. But, papa, so long as I can be a comfort to you—”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, with that tone which Lucilla could remember fifteen years ago, when she made the same magnanimous suggestion, “but I can’t live forever, you know. It would be a pity to sacrifice yourself to me, and then perhaps next morning find that it was a useless sacrifice. It very often happens like that when self-devotion is carried too far. You’ve behaved very well, and shown a great deal of good sense, Lucilla—more than I gave you credit for when you commenced—I may say that; and if there was to be any change, for instance—”
“What change?” said Lucilla, not without some anxiety; for
