“Why, Puss!” exclaimed her father, “what’s the matter?”
She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to command it when thus interrupted.
“‘To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is always sorrowful. Oh Home, so true to us, so often slighted in return, be lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do not haunt their erring footsteps too reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white head. Let no old loving word or tone rise up in judgment against thy deserter; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent!’”
“Dear Marion, read no more to-night,” said Grace—for she was weeping.
“I cannot,” she replied, and closed the book. “The words seem all on fire!”
The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head.
“What! overcome by a story-book!” said Doctor Jeddler. “Print and paper! Well, well, it’s all one. It’s as rational to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything else. But dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. I dare say the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up all round—and if she hasn’t, a real home is only four walls; and a fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What’s the matter now?”
“It’s only me, Mister,” said Clemency, putting in her head at the door.
“And what’s the matter with you?” said the Doctor.
“Oh, bless you, nothing an’t the matter with me,” returned Clemency—and truly too, to judge from her well-soaped face, in which there gleamed as usual the very soul of good humour, which, ungainly as she was, made her quite engaging. Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood, it is true, to range within that class of personal charms called beauty-spots. But it is better, going through the world, to have the arms chafed in that narrow passage, than the temper: and Clemency’s was sound and whole as any beauty’s in the land.