Chapter Thirty Eight.
The Victims.
If Mrs Rowland was dissatisfied with her success, while seeing that some resources of comfort remained to the Hopes and Margaret, a view of the interior of the corner-house would probably have affected her deeply, and set her moralising on the incompleteness of all human triumphs. There was peace there which even she could not invade—could only, if she had known it, envy. Her power was now exhausted, and her work was unfinished. For many weeks, she had made Margaret as miserable as she had intended to make her. Margaret had suffered from an exasperating sense of injury; but that was only for a few hours. Hers was not a nature which could retain personal resentment for any length of time. She needed the relief of compassionate and forgiving feelings; and she cast herself into them for solace, as the traveller, emerging from the glaring desert, throws himself down beside the gushing spring in the shade. From the moment that she did this, it became her chief trouble that Philip was blamed by others. Her friends said as little as they could in reference to him, out of regard for her feelings; but she could not help seeing that Maria’s indignation was strong, and that Hester considered that her sister had had a happy escape from a man capable of treating her as Philip had done. If it had been possible to undertake his defence, Margaret would have done so. As there were no means of working upon others to forgive her wrongs, she made it her consolation to forgive them doubly herself; to cheer up under them; to live for the aim of being more worthy of Philip’s love, the less he believed her to be so. Her lot was far easier now than it had been in the winter. She had been his; and she believed that she still occupied his whole soul. She was not now the solitary, self-despising being she had felt herself before. Though cut off from intercourse with him as if the grave lay between them, she knew that sympathy with her heart and mind existed. She experienced the struggles, the moaning efforts, of affections doomed to solitude and silence; the shrinking from a whole long life of self-reliance, of exclusion from domestic life; the occasional horror of contemplating the waste and withering of some of the noblest parts of the immortal nature,—a waste and withering which are the almost certain consequence of violence done to its instincts and its laws. From these pains and terrors she suffered; and from some of smaller account,—from the petty insults, or speculations of the more coarse-minded of her neighbours, and the being too suddenly reminded by passing circumstances of the change which had come over her expectations and prospects; but her love, her forgiveness, her conviction of being beloved, bore her through all these, and saved her from that fever of the heart, in the paroxysms of which she had, in her former and severer trial, longed for death, even for non-existence.
She could enjoy but little of what had been her favourite solace at that time. She had but few opportunities now for long solitary walks. She saw the autumn fading away, melting in rain and cold fog, without its having been made use of. It had been as unfavourable a season as the summer,—dreary, unproductive, disappointing in every way; but there had been days in the latter autumn when the sun had shown his dim face, when the dank hedges had looked fresh, and the fallen leaves in the wood-paths had rustled under the tread of the squirrel; and Margaret would on such days have liked to spend the whole morning in rambles by herself. But there were reasons why she should not. Almost before the chilliness of the coming season began to be felt, hardship was complained of throughout the country. The prices of provisions were inordinately high; and the evil consequences which, in the rural districts, follow upon a scarcity, began to make themselves felt. The poachers were daring beyond belief; and deep was the enmity between the large proprietors and the labourers around them. The oldest men and women, and children scarcely able to walk, were found trespassing day by day in all plantations, with bags, aprons, or pinafores, full of fir-cones, and wood snapped off from the trees, or plucked out of the hedges. There was no end to repairing the fences. There were unpleasant rumours, too, of its being no longer safe to walk singly in the more retired places. No such thing as highway robbery had ever before been heard of at Deerbrook, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant; the oldest of the inhabitants being Jim Bird, the man of a hundred years. But there was reason now for the caution. Mr Jones’s meat-cart had been stopped on the high-road, by two men who came out of the hedge, and helped themselves to what the cart contained. An ill-looking fellow had crossed the path of Mrs James and her young sister in the Verdon woods, evidently with the intention of stopping the ladies; but luckily the jingling of a timber-wain was heard below, and the man had retreated. Mr Grey had desired that the ladies of his family would not go further without his escort than a mile out and back again on the high-road. They were not to attempt the lanes. The Miss Andersons no longer came into Deerbrook in their pony-chaise; and Mrs Howell reported to all her customers that Lady Hunter never walked in her own grounds without a footman behind her, two dogs before her, and the game-keeper within hearing of a scream. Mr Walcot was advised to leave his watch and purse at home when he set forth to visit his country patients; and it did not comfort him much to perceive that his neighbours were always vigilant to note the hour and minute of his setting forth, and to learn the precise time when he might be looked for at home again. It was observed, that he was generally back half-an-hour sooner than he was expected, with a very red face, and his horse all in a foam.
In addition to these grounds of objection to solitary walks, Margaret had strong domestic reasons for denying herself the rambles she delighted in. As the months rolled on, poverty pressed closer and closer. When the rent was secured, and some of the comforts provided which Hester must have in her confinement, so little was left that it became necessary to limit the weekly expenses of the family to a sum small enough to require the nicest management, and the most strenuous domestic industry, to make it suffice. Hope would not pledge his credit while he saw so little prospect of redeeming it. His family were of one mind as to purchasing nothing which they were not certainly able to pay for. This being his principle, he made every effort to increase his funds. A guinea or two dropped in now and then, in return for contributions to medical periodicals. Money was due to him from some of his patients. To these he sent in his bills again, and even made personal application. From several he obtained promises; from two or three the amount of whose debt was very small, he got his money, disgraced by smiles of wonder and contempt. From the greater number he received nothing but excuses on account of the pressure of the times. The small sums he did recover were of a value which none of the three had ever imagined that money could be to them. Every little extra comfort thus obtained,—the dinner of meat once oftener in the week, the fire in the evening, the new gloves for Hope, when the old ones could no longer, by any mending, be made to look fit for him,—what a luxury it was! And all the more for being secretly enjoyed. No one out of the house had a suspicion how far their poverty had gone. Mr Grey had really been vexed at them for withdrawing from the book club; had attributed this instance of economy to the “enthusiasm” which was, in his eyes, the fault of the family; and never dreamed of their not dining on meat, vegetables, and pudding, with their glass of wine, every day. The Greys little knew what a blessing they were conferring on their cousins, when they insisted on having them for a long day once more before Hester’s confinement, and set them down to steaming soup, and a plentiful joint, and accompaniments without stint. The guests laughed, when they were at home again, over the new sort of pleasure they had felt, the delight at the sight of a good dinner, to which nothing was wanting but that Morris should have had her share. Morris, for her part, had been very happy at home. She had put aside for her mistress’s luncheon next day, the broth which she had been told was for her, and had feasted on potatoes and water, and the idea of the good dinner her young ladies were to enjoy. While their affairs were in this state, it was a great luxury in the family to have any unusual comfort which betokened that Hope had been successful in some of his errands,—had received a fee, or recovered the amount of a bill. One day, Morris brought in a goose and giblets, which had been bought and paid for by Mr Hope, the messenger said. Another morning, came a sack of apples, from the orchard of a country patient who was willing to pay in kind. At another time Edward emptied his pockets of knitted worsted stockings and mittens, the handiwork of a farmer’s dame, who was flattered by his taking the produce of her evening industry instead of money, which she could not well spare at the present season. There was more mirth, more real gladness in the house, on the arrival of windfalls like these, than if Hope had daily exhibited a purse full of gold. There was no sting in their poverty; no adventitious misery belonging to it. They suffered its genuine force, and that was all.
What is Poverty? Not destitution, but poverty? It has many shapes,—aspects almost as various as the minds and circumstances of those whom it visits. It is famine to the savage in the wilds; it is hardship to the labourer in the cottage; it is disgrace to the proud; and to the miser despair. It is a spectre which “with dread of change perplexes” him who lives at ease. Such are its aspects: but what is it? It is a deficiency of the comforts of life,—a deficiency present and to come. It involves many other things; but this is what it is. Is it then worth all the apprehension and grief it occasions? Is it an adequate cause for the gloom of the merchant, the discontent of the artisan, the foreboding sighs of the mother, the ghastly dreams which haunt the avaricious, the conscious debasement of the subservient, the humiliation of the proud? These are severe sufferings; are they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving life itself unimpaired. “The life is more than food, and the body than raiment;” and the untimely extinction of the life itself would not be worth the pangs which apprehended poverty excites. But poverty involves woes which, in their sum, are far greater than itself. To a multitude it is the loss of a pursuit which they have yet to learn will be certainly supplied. For such, alleviation or compensation is in store, in the rising up of objects new, and the creation of fresh hopes. The impoverished merchant, who may no longer look out for his argosies, may yet be in glee when he finds it “a rare dropping morning for the early colewort.” To another multitude, poverty involves loss of rank,—a letting down among strangers whose manners are ungenial, and their thoughts unfamiliar. For these there may be solace in retirement, or the evil may fall short of its threats. The reduced gentlewoman may live in patient solitude, or may grow into sympathy with her neighbours, by raising some of them up to herself, and by warming her heart at the great central fire of Humanity, which burns on under the crust of manners as rough as the storms of the tropics, or as frigid as polar snows. The avaricious are out of the pale of peace already, and at all events. Poverty is most seriously an evil to sons and daughters, who see their parents stripped of comfort, at an age when comfort is almost one with life itself: and to parents who watch the narrowing of the capacities of their children by the pressure of poverty,—the impairing of their promise, the blotting out of their prospects. To such mourning children there is little comfort, but in contemplating the easier life which lies behind, and (it may be hoped) the happier one which stretches before their parents, on the other side the postern of life. If there is sunshine on the two grand reaches of their path, the shadow which lies in the midst is necessarily but a temporary gloom. To grieving parents it should be a consoling truth, that as the life is more than food, so is the soul more than instruction and opportunity, and such accomplishments as man can administer: that as the fowls are fed and the lilies clothed by Him whose hand made the air musical with the one, and dressed the fields with the other, so is the human spirit nourished and adorned by airs from heaven, which blow over the whole earth, and light from the skies, which no hand is permitted to intercept. Parents know not but that Providence may be substituting the noblest education for the misteaching of intermediate guardians. It may possibly be so; but if not, still there is appointed to every human being much training, many privileges, which capricious fortune can neither give nor take away. The father may sigh to see his boy condemned to the toil of the loom, or the gossip and drudgery of the shop, when he would fain have beheld him the ornament of a university; but he knows not whether a more simple integrity, a loftier disinterestedness, may not come out of the humbler discipline than the higher privilege. The mother’s eyes may swim as she hears her little daughter sing her baby brother to sleep on the cottage threshold,—her eyes may swim at the thought how those wild and moving tones might have been exalted by art. Such art would have been in itself a good; but would this child then have been, as now, about her Father’s business, which, in ministering to one of his little ones, she is as surely as the archangel who suspends new systems of worlds in the furthest void? Her occupation is now earnest and holy; and what need the true mother wish for more?
What is poverty to those who are not thus set in families? What is it to the solitary, or to the husband and wife who have faith in each other’s strength? If they have the higher faith which usually originates mutual trust, mere poverty is scarcely worth a passing fear. If they have plucked out the stings of pride and selfishness, and purified their vision by faith, what is there to dread? What is their case? They have life, without certainty how it is to be nourished. They do without certainty, like “the young ravens which cry,” and work for and enjoy the subsistence of the day, leaving the morrow to take care of what concerns it. If living in the dreariest abodes of a town, the light from within shines in the dark place, and, dispelling the mists of worldly care, guides to the blessing of tending the sick, and sharing the food of to-day with the orphan, and him who has no help but in them. If the philosopher goes into such retreats with his lantern, there may he best find the generous and the brave. If, instead of the alleys of a city, they live under the open sky, they are yet lighter under their poverty. There, however blank the future may lie before them, they have to-day the living reality of lawns and woods, and flocks in “the green pasture and beside the still waters,” which silently remind them of the Shepherd, under whom they shall not want any real good thing. The quiet of the shady lane is theirs, and the beauty of the blossoming thorn above the pool. Delight steals through them with the scent of the violet, or the new mown hay. If they have hushed the voices of complaint and fear within them, there is the music of the merry lark for them, or of the leaping waterfall, or of a whole orchestra of harps, when the breeze sweeps through a grove of pines. While it is not for fortune to “rob them of free nature’s grace,” and while she leaves them life and strength of limb and soul, the certainty of a future, though they cannot see what, and the assurance of progression, though they cannot see how,—is poverty worth, for themselves, more than a passing doubt? Can it ever be worth the torment of fear, the bondage of subservience?—the compromise of free thought,—the sacrifice of free speech,—the bending of the erect head, the veiling of the open brow, the repression of the salient soul? If; instead of this, poverty should act as the liberator of the spirit, awakening it to trust in God and sympathy for man, and placing it aloft, fresh and free, like morning on the hill-top, to survey the expanse of life, and recognise its realities from beneath its mists, it should be greeted with that holy joy before which all sorrow and sighing flee away.
Their poverty, which had never afflicted them very grievously, was almost lost sight of by the corner-house family, when Hester’s infant was born. They were all happy and satisfied then, though there were people in Deerbrook who found fault with their arrangements, and were extremely scandalised when it was found that no nurse had arrived from Blickley, and that Morris took the charge of her mistress upon herself. The Greys pronounced by their own fireside that it was a strange fancy—carrying an affection for an old servant to a rather romantic extreme—that it was a fresh instance of the “enthusiasm” which adversity had not yet moderated in their cousins, as might have been wished. Out-of-doors, however, Sophia vaunted the attachment of Morris to her young mistress—an attachment so strong, as that she would have been really hurt if any one else had been allowed to sit up with Hester; and indeed no one could have filled her place half so much to the satisfaction of the family—Morris had had so much experience, and was as fond of her charge as a mother could be. No one knew what a treasure her cousins had in Morris. All of which was true in its separate particulars, though altogether it did not constitute the reason why Hester had no nurse from Buckley.
They were happy and satisfied. Yes, even Margaret. This infant opened up a spring of consolation in her heart, which she could not have believed existed there. On this child she could pour out some of her repressed affections, and on him did she rest her baffled hopes. He beguiled her into the future, from which she had hitherto recoiled. That helpless, unconscious little creature, cradled on her arm, and knowing nothing of its resting-place, was more powerful than sister, brother, or friend—than self-interest, philosophy, or religion, in luring her imagination onward into future years of honour and peace. Holy and sweet was the calm of her mind, as, forgetting herself and her griefs, she watched the first efforts of this infant to acquaint himself with his own powers, and with the world about him; when she smiled at the ungainly stretching of the little limbs, and the unpractised movement of his eyes seeking the light. Holy and sweet were the tears which swelled into her eyes when she saw him at his mother’s breast, and could not but gaze at the fresh and divine beauty now mantling on that mother’s face, amidst the joy of this new relation. It was a delicious moment when Hope came in, the first day that Hester sat by the fireside, when he stopped short for a brief instant, as if arrested by the beauty of what he saw; and then glanced towards Margaret for sympathy. It was a delicious moment to her—the moment of that full, free, unembarrassed glance, which she had scarcely met since the first days of their acquaintance.
It was a pleasure to them all to see Hester well provided with luxuries. Maria, knowing that her surgeon would not accept money from her, took this opportunity of sending in wine. Oh, the pleasure of finding the neglected corkscrew, and making Morris take a glass with them! The Greys brought game, and Hester’s little table was well served every day. With what zeal did Margaret apply herself, under Morris’s teaching, to cook Hester’s choice little dinners! Yes, to cook them. Margaret was learning all Morris’s arts from her; for, of two troubles which somewhat disturbed this season of comfort, one was that it appeared too certain that Morris must go, as Susan and Charles had gone before her. No one had expressly declared this: it was left undiscussed, apparently by common consent, till it should be ascertained that baby was healthy and Hester getting strong; but the thought was in the minds of them all, and their plans involved preparation for this.
The other trouble was, that with peace and comfort, some slight, very slight symptoms recurred of Hester’s propensity to self-torment. It could not be otherwise. The wonder was, that for weeks and months she had been relieved from her old enemy to the extent she had been. The reverence with which her husband and sister regarded the temper in which she had borne unbounded provocation and most unmerited adversity, sometimes beguiled them into a hope that her troubles from within were over for ever; but a little reflection, and some slight experience, taught them that this was unreasonable. They remembered that the infirmity of a lifetime was not to be wholly cured in half-a-year; and that they must expect some recurrence of her old malady at times when there was no immediate appeal to her magnanimity, and no present cause for anxiety for those in whom she forgot herself.
The first time that Hester was in the drawing-room for the whole day, Morris was laying the cloth for dinner, and Margaret was walking up and down the room with the baby on her arm, when Hope came in. Hester forgot everybody and everything else when her husband appeared—a fact which Morris’s benevolence was never weary of noting and commenting upon to herself. She often wondered if ever lady loved her husband as her young mistress did; and she smiled to herself to see the welcome that beamed upon Hester’s whole face when Hope came to take his seat beside her on the sofa. This was in her mind to-day, when her master presently said:
“Where is my boy? I have not seen him for hours. Why do you put him out of his father’s way? Oh, Margaret has him! Come, Margaret, yield him up. You can have him all the hours that I am away. You do not grudge him to me, do you?”
“My master won’t have to complain, as many gentlemen do,” said Morris, “or as many gentlemen feel, if they don’t complain, that he is neglected for the sake of his baby.”
“If you enjoy your dinner to-day, love,” said Hester, “you must not give me the credit of it. You and I are to sit down to our pheasant together, they tell me. Margaret and Morris will have it that they have both dined.”
“There is little in getting a comfortable dinner ready,” said Morris, “whether it is the lady herself, or another, that looks to a trifle like that. It is the seeing his wife so full of care and thought about her baby as to have none to spare for him, that frets many an one who does not like to say anything about it. Fathers cannot be so taken with a very young baby as the mothers are, and it is mortifying to feel themselves neglected for a newcomer. I have often seen that, my dears; but I shall never see it here, I find.”
“I do not know how you should, Morris,” said Hester, in something of the old tone, which made her sister’s heart throb almost before it reached her ear. “Margaret will save me from any such danger. Margaret takes care that nobody shall be engrossed with the baby but herself. She has not a thought to spare for any of us while she has baby in her arms. The little fellow has cut us all out.”
Margaret quickly transferred the infant to her brother’s arm, and left the room. She thought it best; for her heart was very full, and she could not speak. She restrained her tears, and went into the kitchen to busy herself about the dinner she had cooked.
“’Tis a fine pheasant, indeed, Miss Margaret, my dear, and beautifully roasted, I am sure: and I hope you will go up and see them enjoy it. I am so sorry, my dear, for what I said just now. I merely spoke what came up in my mind when I felt pleased, and never thought of its bringing on any remark. Nor was anything intended, I am sure, that should make you look so sad: so do you go up, and take the baby again, when they sit down to dinner, as if nothing had been said. Do, my dear, if I may venture to say so. I will follow you with the dinner in a minute.”
“I wonder how it is, my love,” said Hope, in a voice which spoke all the tenderness of his heart; “I wonder how it is that you can endure wrong so nobly, and that you cannot bear the natural course of events. Tell me how it is, Hester, that you have sustained magnanimously all the injuries and misfortunes of many months, and that you now quarrel with Margaret’s affection for our child.”
“Ah why, indeed, Edward?” she replied, humbly. “Why, but that I am unworthy that such an one as Margaret should love me and my child.”
“Enough, enough. I only want to show you how I regard the case about this new love of Margaret’s. Do you not see how much happier she has been since this little fellow was born?”
“Oh, yes.”
“One may now fancy that she may be gay again. Let us remember what an oppressed heart she had, and what it must be to her to have a new object, so innocent and unconscious as this child, to lavish her affection upon. Do not let us grudge her the consolation, or poison the pleasure of this fresh interest.”
“I am afraid it is done,” cried Hester, in great distress. “I was wicked—I was more cruel than any of our enemies, when I said what I did. I may well bear with them; for, God knows, I am at times no better than they. I have robbed my Margaret of her only comfort—spoiled her only pleasure.”
“No, no. Here she comes. Look at her.”
Margaret’s face was indeed serene, and she made as light of the matter as she could, when Hester implored that she would pardon her hasty and cruel words, and that she would show her forgiveness by continuing to cherish the child. He must not begin to suffer already for his mother’s faults, Hester said. There could be no doubt of Margaret’s forgiveness, nor of her forgetfulness of what had been said, as far as forgetfulness was possible. But the worst of such sayings is, that they carry in them that which prevents their being ever quite forgotten. Hester had effectually established a constraint in her sister’s intercourse with the baby, and imposed upon Margaret the incessant care of scrupulously adjusting the claims of the mother and the child. The evils arising from faulty temper may be borne, may be concealed, but can never be fully repaired. Happy they whose part it is to endure and to conceal, rather than to inflict, and to strive uselessly to repair!
Margaret’s part was the easiest of the three, as they sat at the table—she with the baby in her arms, and all agreeing that the time was come for an explanation with Morris—for depending on themselves for almost all the work of the house.
“Come, Morris,” said Hester, when the cloth was removed; “you must spare us half-an-hour. We want to consult with you. Come and sit down.”
Morris came, with a foreboding heart.
“It will be no news to you,” said Hope, “that we are very poor. You know nearly as much of our affairs as we do ourselves, as it is right that you should. We have not wished to make any further change in our domestic plans till this little fellow was born. But now that he is beginning to make his way in the world, and that his mother is well and strong, we feel that we must consider of some further effort to spend still less than we do now.”
“There are two ways in which this may be done, we think, Morris,” said Hester. “We may either keep the comfort of having you with us, and pinch ourselves more as to dress and the table—”
“Oh! ma’am, I hope you will not carry that any further.”
“Well, if we do not carry that any further, the only thing to be done, I fear, is to part with you.”
“Is there no other way, I wonder,” said Morris, as if thinking aloud. “If it must be one of these ways, it certainly seems to me to be better for ladies to work hard with good food, than to have a servant, and stint themselves in health and strength. But who would have thought of my young ladies coming to this?”
“It is a situation in which hundreds and thousands are placed, Morris; and why not we, as well as they?”
“May be so, ma’am: but it grieves one, too.”
“Do not grieve. I believe we all think that this parting with you is the first real grief that our change of fortune has caused us. Somehow or other, we have been exceedingly comfortable in our poverty. If that had been all, we should have had a very happy year of it.”
“One would desire to say nothing against what is God’s will, ma’am; but one may be allowed, perhaps, to hope that better times will come.”
“I do hope it, and believe it,” said her master.
“And if better times come, Morris, you will return to us. Will you not?”
“My dear, you know nothing would make me leave you now (as you say I am a comfort to you) if I had any right to say I would stay. I could live upon as little as anybody, and could do almost without any wages. But there is my poor sister, you know, ladies. She depends upon me for everything, now that she cannot work herself: and I must earn money for her.”
“We are quite aware of that,” said Margaret. “It is for your sake and hers, quite as much as for our own, that we think we must part.”
“We wish to know what you would like to do,” said Hester. “Shall we try to find a situation for you near us, or would you be happier to go down among your old friends?”
“I had better go where I am sure of employment, ma’am. Better go down to Birmingham at once. I should never have left it but for my young ladies’ sakes. But I should be right glad, my dears, to leave it again for you, if you can at any time write to say you wish for me back. There is another way I have thought of sometimes; but, of course, you cannot have overlooked anything that could occur to me. If you would all go to Birmingham, you have so many friends there, and my master would be valued as he ought to be; which there is no sign of his being in this place. I do not like this place, my dears. It is not good enough for you.”
“We think any place good enough for us where there are men and women living,” said Hope, kindly but gravely. “Others have thought as you do, Morris, and have offered us temptations to go away; but we do not think it right. If we go, we shall leave behind us a bad character, which we do not deserve. If we stay, I have very little doubt of recovering my professional character, and winning over our neighbours to think better of us, and be kind to us again. We mean to try for it, if I should have to hire myself out as a porter in Mr Grey’s yards.”
“Pray, don’t say that, sir. But, indeed, I believe you are so far right as that the good always conquers at last.”
“Just so, Morris: that is what we trust. And for the sake of this little fellow, if for nothing else, we must stand by our good name. Who knows but that I may leave him a fine flourishing practice in this very place, when I retire or die?—always supposing he means to follow his father’s profession.”
“Sir, that is looking forward very far.”
“So it is, Morris. But however people may disapprove of looking forward too far, it is difficult to help it when they become parents. Your mistress could tell you, if she would own the truth, that she sees her son’s manly beauty already under that little wry mouth, and that odd button of a nose. Why may not I just as well fancy him a young surgeon?”
“Morris would say, as she once said to me,” observed Margaret, “‘Remember death, my dear; remember death.’”
“We will remember it,” said Morris, “but we must remember at the same time God’s mercy in giving life. He who gave life can preserve it: and this shall be my trust for you all, my dears, when I am far away from you. There is a knock! I must go. Oh! Miss Margaret, who will there be to go to the door when I am gone, but you?”
Mr Jones had knocked at the door, and left a letter. These were its contents:—
“Sir,—I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in applying to you for my own satisfaction. My wife and I have perceived with much concern that we have lost much of your custom of late. We mind little the mere falling off of custom in any quarter, in comparison with failing to give satisfaction. We have always tried, I am sure, to give satisfaction in our dealings with your family, sir; and if there has been any offence, I can assure you it is unintentional, and shall feel obliged by knowing what it is. We cannot conceive, sir, where you get your meat, if not from us; and if you have the trouble of buying it from a distance, I can only say we should be happy to save you the trouble, if we knew how to serve you to your liking; for, sir, we have a great respect for you and yours.
“Your obedient servants,
“John Jones,
“Mary Jones.”
“The kind soul!” cried Hester. “What must we say to them?”
“We must set their minds at ease about our good-will to them. How that little fellow stares about him, like a child of double his age! I do believe I could make him look wise at my watch already. Yes, we must set the Joneses at ease, at all events.”
“But how? We must not tell them that we cannot afford to buy of them as we did.”
“No; that would be begging. We must trust to their delicacy not to press too closely for a reason, when once assured that we respect them as highly as they possibly can us.”
“You may trust them,” said Margaret, “I am convinced. They will look in your face, and be satisfied without further question; and my advice, therefore, is, that you do not write, but go.”
“I will; and now. They shall not suffer a moment’s pain that I can save them. Good-night, my boy! What! you have not learned to kiss yet. Well, among us all, you will soon know how, if teaching will do it. What a spirit he has! I fancy he will turn out like Frank.”