Margaret smiled in a peculiar way. “If he only knew how glad I am there was not.” And Ethel knew that the church was his token to Margaret, and that any “fading frail memorial” would have lessened the force of the signification.
Ethel could speak better to her brother than to her sister. “Oh, Richard! Richard! Richard!” she cried, and a most unusual thing with both, she flung her arms round his neck. “It is come at last! If it had not been for you, this would never have been. How little likely it seemed, that dirty day, when I talked wildly, and you checked me!”
“You had faith and perseverance,” said Richard, “or—”
“You are right,” said Margaret, as Ethel was about to disclaim. “It was Ethel’s steadiness that brought it before Alan’s mind. If she had yielded when we almost wished it, in the time of the distress about Mrs. Green, I do believe that all would have died away!”
“I didn’t keep steady—I was only crazy. You and Ritchie and Mr. Wilmot—” said Ethel, half crying; then, as if unable to stay, she exclaimed with a sort of petulance, “And there’s Harry playing all sorts of rigs with Aubrey! I shan’t get any more sense out of him to-day!”
And away she rushed to the wayfaring dust of her life of labour, to find Aubrey and Daisy half-way up the tulip tree, and Harry mischievously unwilling to help them down again, assuring her that such news deserved a holiday, and that she was growing a worse tartar than Miss Winter. She had better let the poor children alone, put on her bonnet, and come with him to tell Mr. Wilmot.
Whereat Ethel was demurring, when Dr. May came forth, and declared he should take her himself.
Poor Mr. Wilmot laboured under a great burden of gratitude, which no one would receive from him. Dr. May and Ethel repudiated thanks almost with terror; and, when he tried them with the captain, he found very doubtful approval of the whole measure, so that Harry alone was a ready acceptant of a full meed of acknowledgments for his gallant extraction of the will.
No one was more obliged to him than Hector Ernescliffe, who wrote to Margaret that it would be very jolly to come home again, and that he was delighted that the captain could not hinder either that or Cocksmoor Church. “And as to Maplewood, I shall not hate it so much, if that happens which I hope will happen.” Of which oracular sentence, Margaret could make nothing.
The house of May felt more at their ease when the uncongenial captain had departed, although he carried off Harry with him. There was the better opportunity for a tea-drinking consultation with Dr. Spencer and Mr. Wilmot, when Margaret lay on her sofa, looking better than for months past, and taking the keenest interest in every arrangement.