“I’m fond of you both, and if I make more of Nell than of you, I am sure you have no reason to complain, for think of the difference between you. She is, so to speak, nobody’s child—at least there is not one of her own folks left alive to care for her, while you are just the cherished elder daughter of a family,” Mrs. Nichols said warmly.
“Everyone seems to get on with Nell; I wonder why? for she is not pretty, although she has a nice face. She is not well educated either, yet there is a sort of refinement about her, which, as a rule, one finds only in very cultured people.” There was a little envy in Gertrude’s tone now, as if she knew herself to be lacking in the quality which she so much admired in her friend.
“Parson Hamblyn was a gentleman, a real one,” replied Mrs. Nichols, with emphasis. “Dr. Russell reminds me of him sometimes, with his fine manners and educated speech; but the doctor is an active man, and is going to be a successful one if only he can get a chance; while the parson was a dreamer and a thinker. He was a saint too, if ever there was one. But, taken all round he was too good to live, and I suppose that is why he died.”
“Is anyone too good to live?” asked Gertrude, opening her eyes widely, and thinking of her own harassed father, with his gentle uncomplaining patience under heavy tribulation.
“I don’t fancy I shall be in any danger of dying from that complaint yet awhile,” said Mrs. Nichols, with a shrug of her ample shoulders. “But there are some people who are so unworldly, that they seem more fit for heaven than this earth, and Nell’s father was one of them. She gets her refinement from him, but all her kind helpful ways come from her own good heart, poor child! I wish I had been there to help her to-night.”
“What is that?” cried Gertrude, springing from her seat and hurrying to the door.
“I didn’t hear anything, except that man snoring. A deal more noise he makes asleep than he ever does when he is awake,” Mrs. Nichols said scornfully, as she also rose and followed Gertrude to the door.
The night was calm and still, with a touch of frost in the quiet air, which would turn the maples crimson and gold the next time the sun shone down upon them.
A minute or two they stood listening at the door; then Gertrude said eagerly—
“It is a train coming, I am sure of it. Oh, will you wake the station-master, and ask him to see if the points are all right? Sam Peters always attends to that, you know, so it may be forgotten.”