“Nothing could be better. Do so, Dinah. I owe the young fellow a reparation, and I shall not have an easy conscience till I make it.”
“Ah, brother Peter, if your moneyed debts had only given you one-half the torment of your moral ones, what a rich man you might have been to-day!”
Long after his sister had gone away and left him, Peter Barrington continued to muse over this speech. He felt it, felt it keenly too, but in no bitterness of spirit.
Like most men of a lax and easy temper, he could mete out to himself the same merciful measure he accorded to others, and be as forgiving to his own faults as to theirs. “I suppose Dinah is right, though,” said he to himself. “I never did know that sensitive irritability under debt which insures solvency. And whenever a man can laugh at a dun, he is pretty sure to be on the high-road to bankruptcy! Well, well, it is somewhat late to try and reform, but I'll do my best!” And thus comforted, he set about tying up fallen rose-trees and removing noxious insects with all his usual zeal.
“I half wish the place did not look in such beauty, just as I must leave it for a while. I don't think that japonica ever had as many flowers before; and what a season for tulips! Not to speak of the fruit There are peaches enough to stock a market. I wonder what Dinah means to do with them? She 'll be sorely grieved to make them over as perquisites to Darby, and I know she 'll never consent to have them sold. No, that is the one concession she cannot stoop to. Oh, here she comes! What a grand year for the wall fruit, Dinah!” cried he, aloud.
“The apricots have all failed, and fully one-half of the peaches are worm-eaten,” said she, dryly.
Peter sighed as he thought, how she does dispel an illusion, what a terrible realist is this same sister! “Still, my dear Dinah, one-half of such a crop is a goodly yield.”
“Out with it, Peter Barrington. Out with the question that is burning for utterance. What's to be done with them? I have thought of that already. I have told Polly Dill to preserve a quantity for us, and to take as much more as she pleases for her own use, and make presents to her friends of the remainder. She is to be mistress here while we are away, and has promised to come up two or three times a week, and see after everything, for I neither desire to have the flower-roots sold, nor the pigeons eaten before our return.”
“That is an admirable arrangement, sister. I don't know a better girl than Polly!”
“She is better than I gave her credit for,” said Miss Barrington, who was not fully pleased at any praise not bestowed by herself. A man's estimate of a young woman's goodness is not so certain of finding acceptance from her own sex! “And as for that girl, the wonder is that with a fool for a mother, and a crafty old knave for a father, she really should possess one good trait or one amiable quality.” Barrington muttered what sounded like concurrence, and she went on: “And it is for this reason I have taken an interest in her, and hope, by occupying her mind with useful cares and filling her hours with commendable duties, she will estrange herself from that going about to fine houses, and frequenting society where she is exposed to innumerable humiliations, and worse.”