Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/78

 will hope. I will, in spite of a thousand doctors. Bear up, Margaret, and be brave enough to hope!"

Margaret choked in trying to speak, and when she did it was very low.

"I must try to be meek enough to trust. Oh, Frederick! mamma was getting to love me so! And I was getting to understand her. And now comes death to snap us asunder!"

"Come, come, come! Let us go up-stairs, and do something, rather than waste time that may be so precious. Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life. My theory is a sort of parody on the maxim of 'Get money, my son, honestly if you can; but get money.' My precept is, 'Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something.'"

"Not excluding mischief," said Margaret, smiling faintly through her tears.

"By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards. Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last."

If Margaret thought Frederick's theory rather a rough one at first, she saw how he worked it out into continual production of kindness in fact. After a bad night with his mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a leg-rest for Dixon,