"Ethel out and Norman? His seal is only too pretty--"
"They are all helping Dr. Spencer at Cocksmoor."
"What a pity! But it is so very kind of him to treat me as a daisy. In some ways I like his present for that the best of all," said Meta.
"I will tell him so," said Mary.
"Yes, no," said Meta. "I am not pretending to be anything half so nice."
Mary and Blanche fell upon her for calling herself anything but the nicest flower in the world; and she contended that she was nothing better than a parrot-tulip, stuck up in a parterre; and just as the discussion was becoming a game at romps, Dr. May came in, and the children shouted to him to say whether his humming-bird were a daisy or a tulip.
"That is as she comports herself," he said playfully.
"Which means that you don't think her quite done for," said Meta.
"Not quite," said the doctor, with a droll intonation; "but I have not seen what this morning may have done to her."
"Come and see, then," said Meta. "Flora told me to bring you home-- and it is my birthday, you know. Never mind waiting to tell Ethel. Margaret will let her know that I'll keep you out of mischief."
As usual, Dr. May could not withstand her, and she carried him off in triumph in her pony carriage.
"Then you don't give me up yet?" was the first thing she said, as they were off the stones.
"What have you been doing to make me?" said he.
"Doing or not doing--one or the other," she said. "But indeed I wanted to have you to myself. I am in a great puzzle!"
"Sir Henry! I hope she won't consult me!" thought Dr. May, as he answered, "Well, my dear."
"I fear it is a lasting puzzle," she said. "What shall I do with all this money?"
"Keep it in the bank, or buy railway shares!" said Dr. May. looking arch.
"Thank you. That's a question for my cousins in the city. I want you to answer me as no one else can do. I want to know what is my duty now that I have my means in my own hands?"
"There is need enough around--"
"I do not mean only giving a little here and there, but I want you to hear a few of my thoughts. Flora and George are kindness itself-- but, you see, I have no duties. They are obliged to live a gay sort of life--it is their position; but I cannot make out whether it is mine. I don't see that I am like those girls who have to go out as a matter of obedience."
Dr. May considered, but could only say, "You are very young."
"Too young to be independent," sighed Meta. "I must grow old enough to be trusted alone, and in the meantime--"
"Probably an answer will be found," said the doctor. You and your means will find their--their vocation."
"Marriage," said Meta, calmly speaking the word that he had avoided. "I think not."
"Why--" he began.
"I do not think good men like heiresses."
He became strongly interested in a corn-field, and she resumed,
"Perhaps I should only do harm. It may be my duty to wait. All I wish to know is, whether it is?"
"I see you are not like girls who know their duty, and are restless, because it is not the duty they like."
"Oh! I like everything. It is my liking it so much that makes me afraid."
"Even going to Ryde?"
"Don't I like the sailing? and seeing Harry too? I don't feel as if that were waste, because I can sometimes spare poor Flora a little. We could not let her go alone."
"You need never fear to be without a mission of comfort," said Dr. May. "Your 'spirit full of glee' was given you for something. Your presence is far more to my poor Flora than you or she guess."
"I never meant to leave her now," said Meta earnestly. "I only wished to be clear whether I ought to seek for my work."
"It will seek you, when the time comes."
"And meantime I must do what comes to hand, and take it as humiliation that it is not in the more obviously blessed tasks! A call might come, as Cocksmoor did to Ethel. But oh! my money! Ought it to be laid up for myself?"
"For your call, when it comes," said Dr. May, smiling; then gravely, "There are but too many calls for the interest. The principal is your trust, till the time comes."
Meta smiled, and was pleased to think that her first-fruits would be offered to-morrow.
CHAPTER XXII.
"Oh, dear!" sighed Etheldred, as she fastened her white muslin, "I'm afraid it is my nature to hate my neighbour."
"My dear Ethel, what is coming next?" said Margaret.
"I like my neighbour at home, and whom I have to work for, very much," said Ethel, "but oh! my neighbour that I have to be civil to!"
"Poor old King! I am afraid your day will be spoiled with all your toils as lady of the house. I wish I could help you."
"Let me have my grumble out, and you will!" said Ethel.
"Indeed I am sorry you have this bustle, and so many to entertain, when I know you would rather have the peaceful feelings belonging to the day undisturbed. I should like to shelter you up here."
"It is very ungrateful of me," said Ethel, "when Dr. Spencer works so hard for us, not to be willing to grant anything to him."
"And--but then I have none of the trouble of it--I can't help liking the notion of sending out the Church to the island whence the Church came home to us."
"Yes--" said Ethel, "if we could do it without holding forth!"
"Come, Ethel, it is much better than the bazaar--it is no field for vanity."
"Certainly not," said Ethel. "What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who deserve it no more!-- And Norman! I wish I could run away!"
"Richard says we do not guess how well Norman speaks."
"Richard thinks Norman can do anything he can't do himself! It is all chance--he may do very well, if he gets into his 'funny state', but he always suffers for that, and he will certainly put one into an agony at the outset. I wish Dr. Spencer would have let him alone! And then there will be that Sir Henry, whom I can't abide! Oh, I wish I were more charitable, like Miss Bracy and Mary, who will think all so beautiful!"
"So will you, when you come home," said Margaret.
"If I could only be talking to Cherry, and Dame Hall! I think the school children enter into it very nicely, Margaret. Did I tell you how nicely Ellen Reid answered about the hymn, 'From Greenland's icy mountains'? She did not seem to have made it a mere geographical lesson, like Fanny Grigg--"
Ethel's misanthropy was happily conducted off via the Cocksmoor children, and any lingering remains were dissipated by her amusement at Dr. Spencer's ecstasy on seeing Dr. May assume his red robe of office, to go to the minster in state, with the Town Council. He walked round and round his friend, called him Nicholas Randall redivivus, quoted Dogberry, and affronted Gertrude, who had a dim idea that he was making game of papa.
Ethel was one of those to whom representation was such a penance, that a festival, necessitating hospitality to guests of her own rank, was burden enough seriously to disturb the repose of thankfulness for the attainment of her object, and to render difficult the recueillement which she needed for the praise and prayer that she felt due from her, and which seemed to oppress her heart, by a sense of inadequacy of her partial expression. It was well for her that the day began with the calm service in the minster, where it was her own fault if cares haunted her, and she could confess the sin of her irritated sensations, and wishes to have all her own way, and then, as ever, be led aright into thanksgiving for the unlooked-for crowning of her labours.
The archdeacon's sermon amplified what Margaret had that morning expressed, so as to carry on her sense of appropriateness in the offerings of the day being bestowed on distant lands.