At first he had been amused, afterwards attracted, by all her quiet little motherly ways when nursing Daisy, and when he came to be a daily visitor at the house he soon learned to appreciate and admire the girl who, for the sake of all around her, was making such brave and heroic efforts against an adverse fate.
It was not difficult for the doctor's keen eyes to see that Honor, young as she was, was the guide and mainstay of the whole household, nothing, not even the merest trifle being ever settled or arranged without consultation with her first.
And all this was done with graceful cheerfulness and sweetness of temper; for it was very seldom, sorely tried though she was at times, that Honor allowed herself to become ruffled or cross, even with poor Becky in her most stupid fits; and no one but the girl herself knew what a weary, tired-out little frame it often was she stretched upon her bed at night with a sigh of thankfulness for her well-earned rest. Then when better times came, and cares and anxieties lessened, the young doctor saw a new side to her character; for whereas she had before been almost unnaturally sober-minded for one so young, she was now like a bright sunbeam in the house.
No wonder Dr. Sinclair began to think how cheerless his house (which hitherto had appeared to be all that was desirable) looked on his arrival home, and how different it would all be if there was someone always waiting to receive him. In summer-time he would picture this person sitting in the porch, perhaps, with needlework, and when winter came, in a cozy sitting-room all aglow with firelight, with possibly a pair of slippers warming near the fender. O, yes, it was a charming picture! In truth the young doctor, hitherto so matter of fact and prosaic, had taken to painting many such pictures in his mind's eye, and the centre figure always bore, strange to say, a strong resemblance to Honor Merivale. But John Sinclair had got his way to make in the world, for although he had stepped into his father's practice on the latter's death, the list of well-to-do patients was not a very extensive one, there being but few (comparatively) large houses round about the neighbourhood; and the young fellow being kind-hearted and lenient in such matters, fees came in but slowly from his poorer patients, often not at all.
This had been of no consequence to the old gentleman during his lifetime, for he had money of his own which made him independent of his profession. In later years, however, he had speculated largely and unsuccessfully, and when on his death-bed he was obliged to tell his son that all he had to leave him was his house and just the bare practice. This intelligence had in no way disconcerted John Sinclair, however. He said he had his brains and his hands, and with those useful commodities had no fears for the future.
He had soon worked the practice up into something very much better than it had been formerly, and, what was more encouraging, he was beginning to be looked upon with favour by his brother practitioners, it being now no uncommon thing for him to be sent for to neighbouring towns to hold consultations with men of long standing and experience.
Still his fortune was not made, and in his castle-building moments he now became painfully conscious of many defects in his bachelor home.
The carpets, which a little while back had appeared quite handsome in his eyes, now look threadbare and worn. The curtains are all of them old-fashioned and dingy. The leather of the dining-room furniture has suddenly become shabby and scratched, whilst the coverings of all the drawing-room chairs and sofas, &c., are faded to the last degree.
No, he could not ask Honor to share his home as it is. He must wait until he shall have the means to brighten up the old house with modern furniture, and to make it both pretty and comfortable. He must wait, too, until he has a certain income (how much, he has not quite decided even to himself) to depend upon yearly.
"She has slaved and laboured enough, poor child!" he says to himself sighing, "and she shall never have to do it again through any rashness of mine."