"Well, you will try it for me, now, at least?" he said.
Nora Blanchard was not given to affectations of any kind, so she rose and complied, quite simply, at once. The clergyman could not but feel that she was right after all, in her estimate of her voice. Her rendering of the air "He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd," was very rich and sweet, for a drawing-room, but lacked the power and compass sufficient to fill a concert hall. At his request, she went on with one or two of the choruses, in which he and Miss Farrell joined her; the three voices blending very harmoniously in the grand music. Mr. Chillingworth noticed a new arrangement of the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," on the piano, and asked Miss Blanchard to sing that to him, which she did with great feeling and expression. As the closing lines came out in solemn hopefulness—
"And, with the morn, those angel-faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile—"
the clergyman's gaze, as the observant Mr. Pomeroy noticed, grew strangely dreamy, as if he were absorbed by the influences of the song. He seemed to be seeing some inward vision, with pain in it as well as pleasure; and on the cessation of the music, he started as if awakened from a spell. Just then, the door opened, and a maid looked in to know if Mrs. Blanchard could tell when the doctor would be home.
"No, I'm sure I don't know," was the reply. "I thought he was back in the surgery by this time. Is it any one in a hurry?"
"Yes, it's a young gentleman wid a note, as wants him right off," said the girl, a new servant, unaccustomed as yet to the exigencies of a doctor's household.
"Oh," said Miss Blanchard, rising hastily from the piano, "I suppose it's some one from Mr. Easton's, for the medicine that Will told me about. I was to see him and give him a particular message. Excuse me, Mr. Chillingworth, I won't be long."
The clergyman seemed still preoccupied, and did not join in the talk of the others while she was gone. In a few minutes she returned, her cheek glowing and her eye bright with some new interest.
"What's the matter, Nora?" said Mrs. Blanchard, looking at her with some surprise.
"Oh," she replied, hurriedly, "it's a messenger from Mr. Alden, wanting Will at once, for a very sad case—a poor young woman who seems dying of bronchitis and exhaustion. And she has no one with her but a child. I think I must go myself, for I know quite well what to do. I didn't nurse Auntie through bronchitis last winter for nothing! I can take some fluid-beef and make her a little beef-tea, at any rate. And I know where there is some of the medicine Will prescribed for Auntie."