Clarence talked to him paternally, and took him to second-hand shops to provide a cheap library of substantial reading, engaging to cater for him for the future, not omitting Dickens; and Emily worked at providing him with the small conveniences and comforts for the voyage that called for a woman’s hand. He was so grateful that it was like fitting out a dear friend or younger brother.
‘I wonder,’ said Clarence, as he walked by my chair on one of the last days, ‘whether it was altogether wise to have this young Frith here so much, though it could hardly have been helped.’
To which I rejoined that it could hardly have displeased the uncle, and that if it did, the youth’s welfare was worth annoying him for.
‘I meant something nearer home,’ said Clarence, and proceeded to ask if I did not think Lawrence Frith a good deal smitten with Emily.
To me it seemed an idea not worth consideration. Any youth, especially one who had lived so secluded a life, would naturally be taken by the first pleasing young woman who came in his way, and took a kindly interest in him; but I did not think Emily very susceptible, being entirely wrapped up in home and parish matters; and I reminded Clarence that she had not been loverless. She had rejected the Curate of Hillside; and we all saw, though she did not, that only her evident indifference kept Sir George Eastwood’s second son from making further advances.
Clarence was not convinced. He said he had never seen our sister look at either of these as she did when Lawrence came into the room; and there was no denying that there was a soft and embellishing light on her whole countenance, and a fresh sweetness in her voice. But then he seemed such a boy as to make the notion ridiculous; and yet, on reckoning, it proved that their years were equal. All that could be hoped was that the sentiment, if it existed, would not discover itself before they parted, so as to open their eyes to the dreariness of the prospect, and cause our mother to think we had betrayed our trust in the care of our sister. As we could do nothing, we were not sorry that this was the last day. Clarence was to go on board with Frith, see him out of the river, and come back with the pilot; and we all drove down to the wharf together; nobody saying much by the way, except the few jerky remarks we brothers felt bound to originate and reply to.
Emily sat very still, her head bent under her shading bonnet—I think she was trying to keep back tears for the solitary exile; and Lawrence, opposite, was unable to help watching her with wistful eyes, which would have revealed all, if we had not guessed it already. It might be presumptuous, but it made us very sorry for him.
When the moment of parting came, there was a wringing of hands, and, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ in a low, broken, heartfelt voice, and to Emily, ‘You have made life a new thing to me. I shall never forget,’ and the showing of a tiny book in his waistcoat pocket.
When the two had disappeared, Emily, no longer restraining her tears, told me that she had exchanged Prayer-books with him, and they were to read the Psalms at the same time every day. ‘I thought it might be a help to him,’ she said simply.
Nor was there any consciousness in her talk as she related to me what he had told her about his mother and sisters, and his dreary sense of piteous loneliness, till we had adopted him as a brother—in which capacity I trusted that she viewed him.