“O Miss Isa, I do hope you won’t be away long,” cried the young girl, looking up into the face of her mistress with a pleading expression; “we do miss you so sadly!”
“Is my brother better?” asked Isa.
“Master shuts himself up a deal in his room, and don’t care to be disturbed, and seems worried like—he do,” replied Lottie with rustic simplicity, and in a tone from which Isa too readily gathered that neither Gaspar’s spirits nor his temper had improved since her departure. “O Miss Isa, I wish you’d come back!”
“Tell my brother that, without fail, I’ll come and see him to-morrow.”
“And stay with him?” asked Lottie, anxiously.
Isa hesitated for a moment, but she could not bring herself to say “Yes.” There was to be on the following evening another of those delightful little parties at the Castle, at which Isa anticipated that she would enjoy one of the sweetest and purest of pleasures, that of converse with the intellectual, the refined, and the good—converse that gratifies at once the mind and the heart. Isa was little disposed to exchange such pleasure for a dull, cheerless evening at the Lodge, spent beside a peevish valetudinarian, who would neither appreciate nor thank her for the sacrifice. No; she would make a compromise with conscience; she would give the morning to her brother, and doubly enjoy the evening from the consciousness of having performed an irksome duty. Isa sent by Lottie a message to her brother, and then, only half satisfied with herself, returned with Edith to the Castle.
Lottie walked silently for a little time beside Mrs. Bolder, the grocer’s wife, who was always the young girl’s companion to and from the evening meeting. Lottie broke the silence by a sigh.
“Oh, but the house has grown dull and lonesome!” she murmured. “Half of the pleasure of going to the lecture was to talk it over after, and have the hard things explained.”
“You don’t find old Hannah much of a companion, I suppose.”
“Hannah!” repeated Lottie dolefully; “she never speaks to me but to chide; nor does master, for the matter of that. Oh, how I does miss dear mother and brother! there’s no one near me as cares for me, now that Miss Isa’s away. I’m afeard that the Midianite Discontent is creeping in after all.” Poor Lottie, with her warm, impulsive, affectionate nature, found even the “meat every day, and a sovereign a quarter,” insufficient to brighten her solitary lot.