Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/231

 as companion to the young ladies could be very easily defined, and would be very readily understood. Do you like the plan?"

All the details of the proposition rushed through her mind before she spoke. Home comforts, luxury, good living, warmth, care, attention, money, or at least the command if not the possession of money, that is what it meant, instead of a wretched lodging, a starveling income, penury, and perhaps, so far as certain necessaries for her mother were concerned, want. What would they sacrifice? not freedom, they had never had it, and if their lives were still to be passed in drudgery it would, at all events, be better to be the drudge of a kind old man and two insignificant girls, than of a set of racketty schoolboys, as they had hitherto been. Position? no sacrifice there; the respect always paid to them was paid to them as James Ashurst's wife and daughter, and that respect they would still continue to receive. All in the village knew them, the state of their finances, the necessity of their availing themselves of any opportunity for bettering their condition which might present itself; and out of the village they had but few acquaintances, and none for whose opinion they had the least care. So Marian, with beaming eyes and heightened colour, said,

"Yes, dear old friend, frankly I do like the plan. If it were carried out an immense load of anxiety would be removed from my mind, respecting mamma's immediate future you know, and it would suit our circumstances in various ways. Is it possible? How can it be brought about?"

"You are as prompt as ever, Marian!" said the doctor, smiling; "I never saw a girl retain so many of her childish characteristics!" Marian winced a little as he said this, remembering Tom's remarks that morning on her childish character as depicted by Mesdames Whicher and Croker. "Yes, I think it is perfectly feasible, and it can be brought about by me. Mr. Creswell, having known me for many years, and believing that I never advise him but for his good, is always ready to listen to any advice I give him, and if I judge rightly, will be already predisposed to agree with this proposition, and to take it as though you and your mamma were conferring a favour on him rather than. Dear me, look at this foolish fellow, coming towards us at full gallop! The man must be drunk! Hallo, sir, hi! hallo! Why it's one of the Woolgreaves grooms, isn't it? I think I know the man's appearance. Hallo, sir, hi! what is it?" And the little doctor pulled the chaise close into the left bank, and stood up, waving his whip, and shouting lustily.

The horseman, who was urging his horse to yet greater speed, paid no attention to the shouts, and contented himself by rising in his stirrups and waving his hand as though bespeaking a clear way, until he came close upon the chaise, when he apparently recognised its occupants, and strove to pull up his horse. With some difficulty, and not until he had shot past them, he succeeded, then turning back, he cried out, "Doctor Osborne, I was going for you, sir! for God's sake, drive up to the house at once—you're wanted, awful bad!"

"What is it?" asked the doctor. "Quiet my child, don't be alarmed, don't shake so! There is nothing happened to your master?"

"No, sir, Master Tom!"

"What of him—taken ill?"

"No sir—chucked off the chesnut mare, and took up for dead in the Five Acres! Ben Pennington was bird-scarin' close by, and he see the accident and hollerd out, and gave the alarm. And some of the farm men came and got a hurdle, and put Master Tom on it, and carried him up to the house. Master see 'em coming, and ran out and would have fell down when he see who it was, but they caught hold of him, and they say he's like a madman now, and Miss Maud, she told me to come after you. Make haste, sir, please! Hadn't you better jump on this mare, sir, she'll carry you quicker nor that cob of your'n, and I'll drive Miss Ashurst home."

"Not for any money," said the doctor; "get on that horse, indeed! There'd be another accident, and no one to be of any assistance. I shall be up at the house in a very few minutes; ride on and say I'm coming. Lord, my dear, fancy such an interruption to our conversation—such a bombshell bursting over the castle we were building in the air!"

"The doctor wishes to speak to you, miss, outside master's door," said Mrs. Caddy, in that hissing whisper which servants always assume in a house of sickness. "He didn't say anything about Master Tom, but his face is as white as white, and"

"Thanks, Mrs. Caddy; I'd better go at once," and Marian left the dining-room, where she had been doing her best to calm her mother's agitation, which expressed