Lucilla, even though Mr. Prendergast had just come to share her anxieties, caught her nephew on his way, and popped her last newly completed pinafore over his harlequinism, persuading him that it was most beautiful and new.
The interview passed off better than could have been hoped. The full-grown, grave-looking man was so different from the mere youth whom Mrs. Murrell had been used to scold and preach at, that her own awe seconded the lectures upon quietness that had been strenuously impressed on her; and she could not complain of his reception of his ‘’opeful son,’ in form at least. Owen held out his hand to her, and bent to kiss his boy, signed to her to sit down, and patiently answered her inquiries and regrets, asking a few civil questions in his turn.
Then he exerted himself to say, ‘I hope to do my best for him and for you, Mrs. Murrell, but I can make no promises; I am entirely dependent at present, and I do not know whether I may not be so for life.’
Whereat, and at the settled mournful look with which it was spoken, Mrs. Murrell burst out crying, and little Owen hung on her, almost crying too. Honor, who had been lying in wait for Owen’s protection, came hastily in and made a clearance, Owen again reaching out his hand, which he laid on the child’s head, so as to turn up the face towards him for a moment. Then releasing it almost immediately, he rested his chin on his hand, and Honor heard him mutter under his moustache, ‘Flibbertigibbet!’
‘When we go home, we will take little Owen with us,’ said Honor, kindly. ‘It is high time he was taken from Little Whittington-street. Country air will soon make a different-looking child of him.’
‘Thank you,’ he answered, despondingly. ‘It is very good in you; but have you not troubles enough already?
‘He shall not be a trouble, but a pleasure.’
‘Poor little wretch! He must grow up to work, and to know that he must work while he can;’ and Owen passed his hand over those useless fingers of his as though the longing to be able to work were strong on him.
Honor had agreed with Lucilla that father and son ought to be together, and that little ‘Hoeing’s’ education ought to commence. Cilla insisted that all care of him should fall to her. She was in a vehement, passionate mood of self-devotion, more overset by hearing that her brother would be a cripple for life than by what appeared to her the less melancholy doom of an early death. She had allowed herself to hope so much from his improvement on the voyage, that what to Honor was unexpected gladness was to her grievous disappointment. Mr. Prendergast arrived to find her half captious, half desperate.
See Owen! Oh, no! he must not think of it. Owen had seen quite people enough to-day; besides, he would be letting all out to him as he had done the other day.