“I wonder what she will say, the dear child!”
“May be that she has no taste for such an old fellow. Hush, mother. Seriously, my chief scruple is whether it be fair to ask a girl to marry a man twice her age, when she has absolutely seen nothing of his kind but the German master!”
“Trust her,” said Mrs. Brownlow. “Nay, she never could have a freer choice than now, when she is too young and simple to be weighted with a sense of being looked down on. It is possible that she may be startled at first, but I think it will be only at life opening on her; so don’t be daunted, and imagine it is your old age and infirmity,” said the mother, smoothing back the locks which certainly were not the clustering curls of youth.
How the mother watched all the next morning, while the unconscious Carey first marvelled at her nervousness and silence, and then grew almost infected by it. It was very strange, she thought, that Mrs. Brownlow, always so kind, should say nothing but “humph” on being told that Miss Heath’s workmen had finished, and that she must return next Monday morning. It was the Doctor’s day to be early at the hospital, and he had had a summons to see some one on the way, so that he was gone before breakfast, when Carey’s attempts to discuss her happy day in the country met with such odd, fitful answers; for, in fact, Mrs. Brownlow could not trust herself to talk, and had no sooner done breakfast than she went off to her housekeeping affairs and others, which she managed unusually to prolong.
Carey was trying to draw some flowers in a glass before her—a little purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown tuft of quaking grass. He came and stood behind her, saying—
“You’ve got the character of those.”
“They are very difficult,” sighed Carey; “I never tried flowers before, but I wanted to take them with me.”
“To take them with you?” he repeated, rather dreamily.
“Yes, back to another sort of Heath,” she said, with a little laugh; “don’t you know I go next Monday?”
“If you go, I hope it will only be to come back.”