“Perhaps I should only do harm. It may be my duty to wait. All I wish to know is, whether it is?”
“I see you are not like girls who know their duty, and are restless, because it is not the duty they like.”
“Oh! I like everything. It is my liking it so much that makes me afraid.”
“Even going to Ryde?”
“Don’t I like the sailing? and seeing Harry too? I don’t feel as if that were waste, because I can sometimes spare poor Flora a little. We could not let her go alone.”
“You need never fear to be without a mission of comfort,” said Dr. May. “Your ‘spirit full of glee’ was given you for something. Your presence is far more to my poor Flora than you or she guess.”
“I never meant to leave her now,” said Meta earnestly. “I only wished to be clear whether I ought to seek for my work.”
“It will seek you, when the time comes.”
“And meantime I must do what comes to hand, and take it as humiliation that it is not in the more obviously blessed tasks! A call might come, as Cocksmoor did to Ethel. But oh! my money! Ought it to be laid up for myself?”
“For your call, when it comes,” said Dr. May, smiling; then gravely, “There are but too many calls for the interest. The principal is your trust, till the time comes.”