I heard the Rev. Cyril Morland talking the management of the ragged schools over with father, and considering his suggestions of improvement. At any other time I should have been proud to notice the deference that he showed to the old man. I should have liked to listen to the comparison of their ideas and plans. But then I was afraid.
The pity of suffering, the zeal for succoring it, seemed to me so much more akin between the curate and father than they had ever really been between him and Frank.
I could not bear to acknowledge it, yet I could not but instinctively feel that it was so.
I did not guess at possible rocks and quicksands of creeds that might be ahead in any intercourse between father and his new friend, but I felt that in him was the spirit of endurance and self-sacrifice which, girl as I was, I could not but fear was lacking in the sympathizing, sympathetic nature of my sister's lover. It was only since he had been at the Grange the last time that I had begun to fear it; but after that, that waxing and waning in the heat of his enterprise was apparent even to me.
I felt that mother was right when she said that you knew where you were with a man who had troubled himself to put some of his ideas into practice, and could not blame her for being glad that father had put his scheme into the hands of one who had shown that he could work as well as talk. I could not blame her; she had no reason for making excuses for Frank Forrester; on the contrary, she had every reason for wishing father to see him in what she called his true colors, so that their intercourse should be at an end.
But I—I had a reason best known to myself for wishing to strengthen every little thread that could bind Frank to father and the Grange. And even though this fervent young curate should turn out to be that man of whom Frank himself had spoken—he who was the "right man to do the work"—I could not like him. How could I like any one who showed signs of taking Frank's place with father?
I sat silent at the board, and well deserved mother's just reproof afterwards for my lapse into the old, ill-mannered ways out of which she hoped I was growing.
I was cross—I was cross with Joyce; but it was unjustly so, and I felt it. When I had said my prayers that night I went up and kissed her where she lay with her golden heaps of hair upon the white pillow.