Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/229

 wanted a few minutes' talk with you, and this has just happened luckily; we can have it without any interruption."

He stretched out his hand, and helped Marian into the seat by his side, then gave the brisk little pony his head, and they rattled cheerily along.

"Let me see, my dear. What was I saying?" said the doctor, after the silence of a few minutes. "I just remember that I ought to have called in the village to see little Boyd, who's in for measles, I suspect. I must start a memorandum book, my memory is beginning to fail me. What was I saying, my dear?"

"You were saying that you wanted to talk to me—about Woolgreaves, I think it must have been."

"About Woolgreaves—the palace, as I called it—oh, yes, that was it. See here, child; I'm the oldest friend you have in the world, and I hope one of the truest; and I want you to answer my questions frankly, and without reserve, just as if I were your father, you know."

"I will do so," said Marian, after a faint flutter at her heart, caused by the notion of the little doctor, good little soul as he was, comparing himself with her dead father.

"That's right!" said Dr. Osborne. "I knew you almost before you came into the world, and that gives me some right to your confidence. Now, then, are you happy at Woolgreaves?"

Marian hesitated a moment before she replied. "Happier than I thought I could have been—yet!"

"Ah, that's right and straightforward. Mind, in all these questions I'm alluding to you, not to your mother. I know her, charming lady, affectionate, and all that; but clinging and unreasoning, likes to lie where she falls, and so on, whereas you've got a head on your shoulders, finely developed and—so on. Now, are they all kind to you at Woolgreaves? Old gentleman kind?"

"Most kind!"

"Of course he is. Never was a man so full of heart as he is! If he had only been at home when your poor father—ah, well! That's no matter now."

"What's that you said, Dr. Osborne—that about my father?"

"Stupid old fool to go blundering into such a subject! Why couldn't I have let it alone! 'Let the dead past bury its dead.' What's that I've heard my girl sing," the old gentleman muttered to himself. Then aloud—"Nothing, my dear! I was only thinking that if Mr. Creswell had been at home just at the time I dare say we might have made some arrangement, and had Godby down from St. Vitus, and then"

"And then my father need not have died for the want of a hundred and thirty guineas! Oh, don't think I forget!" and there came into the girl's face the hard stony rigid look which Dr. Osborne remembered there so well on the night of her father's death, six months before.

"Well!" said the little doctor, laying the whip across his knees and blowing his nose so loudly that the pony shied at the noise—"well, well, dear, Mr. Creswell's absence at that particular time was, to say the least of it, unfortunate; we may say that! Now, what about the girls; are they kind?"

"Very, in their way!"

"Good!" said the little doctor, bringing his hand down with a ringing slap on the chaise apron, "I like that! dry, deuced dry! Like your poor father, that! 'In their way.' Ha, ha! I understand! Their way is not much yours?"

"They are very good tempered and polite, and press one to eat and drink a great deal, and hand chairs and footstools, and always sing when they are asked. And," added Marian, after a moment's pause, and under a fear that she had been unduly cynical, "and they are most attentive and affectionate to mamma."

"I'm delighted to hear that, for that's just as it should be, just as one would have wished it to turn out. Oh, yes; quite ladies, with all the feelings and perceptions of ladies, and talking to your mother nicely, and so on. Not too bright—not to be compared with you, or my girl. Ah, there would have been a companion for you, my dear; all soul, and such an arm for the harp, but married to the coastguard in Dorsetshire!—but still nice girls. Well, I'm glad you give me this account, my dear, for it suits exactly the suggestion I was about to make. But before I made it I wanted to be quite sure of your position at Woolgreaves, and to know for certain that you were liked by all the family."

"You are not certain of that yet, doctor! There is one of the family about whom you have made no inquiry."

"One of the family—at Woolgreaves? Oh, by Jove, Tom, Master Tom! I recollect now—a most important personage in his own esteem, and really some one to be thought of in such a matter as this. And how does Master Tom behave to you?"