The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 83

Tom made another turn to the door, and came back still half wild, and laid his face on his arms upon the table. 'You tell her,' he said, 'I shall never be able--'

Knocking at Averil's door, Dr. May was answered by a call of 'Tom.'

'Not this time, my dear. He is coming, but we have been talking you over. Ave, you have a very young doctor, and rather too much interested.'

'Indeed!' she said, indignantly; 'he has made me much better.'

'Exactly so, my dear; so much better that he agrees with me that he expressed a strong opinion prematurely.'

'They thought the same at New York,' she said, still resolved on his defence.

'My dear, unless you are bent on growing worse in order to justify his first opinion, I think you will prove that which he now holds. And, Ave, it was, under Providence, skill that we may be proud of by which he has subdued the really fatal disorder. You may have much to undergo, and must submit to a sofa life and much nursing, but I think you will not leave him so soon.'

There was a long pause; at last she said, 'O, Dr. May, I beg your pardon. If I had known, I would never--'

'Never what, my dear?'

'Never have consented! It is such a grievous thing for a professional man to have a sick wife.'

'It is exactly what he wanted, my dear, if you will not fly at me for saying so. Nothing else could teach him that patients are not cases but persons; and here he comes to tell you what he thinks of the trouble of a sick wife.'

'Well,' said Dr. May, as he and Ethel walked away together, 'poor young things, they have a chequered time before them. Pretty well for the doctor who hated sick people, Wards, and Stoneborough; but, after all, I have liked none of our weddings better. I like people to rub one another brighter.'

'And I am proud when the least unselfish nature has from first to last done the most unselfish things. No one of us has ever given up so much as Tom, and I am sure he will be happy in it.'

More can hardly be said without straying into the realms of prediction; yet such of our readers as are bent on carrying on their knowledge of the Daisies beyond the last sentence, may be told that, to the best of our belief, Leonard's shoemaking is not his foremost office in the mission, where he finds that fulness of hopeful gladness which experience shows is literally often vouchsafed to those who have given up home, land, and friends, for the Gospel's sake. His letters are the delight of more than one at Stoneborough; and his sister, upon her sofa, is that home member of a mission without whom nothing can be done--the copier of letters, the depot of gifts, the purveyor of commissions, the maker of clothes, the collector of books, the keeper of accounts--so that the house still merits the name of the S. P. G.

office, as it used to be called in the Spenserian era. But Mrs. Thomas May is a good deal more than this. Her sofa is almost a renewal of the family centre that once Margaret's was; the region where all tidings are brought fresh for discussion, all joys and sorrows poured out, the external influence that above all has tended to soften Gertrude into the bright grace of womanhood. Mary Cheviot and Blanche Ernescliffe cannot be cured of a pitying 'poor Tom'--as they speak of 'the Professor'--in which t.i.tle the awkward sound of Dr. Tom has been merged since an appointment subsequent to the appearance of the "Diseases of Climate". But every one else holds that not his honours as a scientific physician, his discoveries, and ably-written papers--not even his father's full and loving confidence and grat.i.tude, give Professor May as much happiness as that bright-eyed delicate wife, with whom all his thoughts seem to begin and end.