“I wonder you don’t wear spectacles,” was the result of his meditation, and it made her laugh by being so inapposite to her own reflections: but the laugh ended in a melancholy look. “Dear mamma did not like me to use them,” she said, in a low voice.
Thus they talked till they arrived at Cocksmoor, where poor Mrs. Taylor, inspirited by better reports of her husband and the hopes for her daughter, was like another woman. Richard was very careful not to raise false expectations, saying it all depended on Miss May and nurse, and what they thought of her strength and steadiness, but these cautions did not seem capable of damping the hopes of the smooth-haired Lucy, who stood smiling and curtseying. The twins were grown and improved, and Ethel supposed they would be brought to church on the next christening Sunday, but their mother looked helpless and hopeless about getting them so far, and how was she to get gossips? Ethel began to grow very indignant, but she was always shy of finding fault with poor people to their faces when she would not have done so to persons in her own station, and so she was silent, while Richard hoped they would be able to manage, and said it would be better not to wait another month for still worse weather and shorter days.
As they were coming out of the house, a big, rough-looking, uncivilised boy came up before them, and called out, “I say—ben’t you the young doctor up at Stoneborough?”
“I am Dr. May’s son,” said Richard; while Ethel, startled, clung to his arm, in dread of some rudeness.
“Granny’s bad,” said the boy; proceeding without further explanation to lead the way to another hovel, though Richard tried to explain that the knowledge of medicine was not in his case hereditary. A poor old woman sat groaning over the fire, and two children crouched, half-clothed, on the bare floor.
Richard’s gentle voice and kind manner drew forth some wonderful descriptions—“her head was all of a goggle, her legs all of a fur, she felt as if some one was cutting right through her.”
“Well,” said Richard kindly, “I am no doctor myself, but I’ll ask my father about you, and perhaps he can give you an order for the hospital.”
“No, no, thank ye, sir; I can’t go to the hospital, I can’t leave these poor children; they’ve no father nor mother, sir, and no one to do for them but me.”
“What do you live on, then?” said Richard, looking round the desolate hut.
“On Sam’s wages, sir; that’s that boy. He is a good boy to me, sir, and his little sisters; he brings it, all he gets, home to me, rig’lar, but ‘tis but six shillings a week, and they makes ‘em take half of it out in goods and beer, which is a bad thing for a boy like him, sir.”