“It is her own ardent desire.”
“True, but are girlish enthusiasms to be trusted? Take care, Norman, take care of her—she is a bit of the choicest porcelain of human kind, and not to be rudely dealt with.”
“No, indeed, but she has the brave enterprising temper, to which I fully believe that actual work, in a good cause, is far preferable to what she calls idleness. I do not believe that we are likely to meet with more hardship than she would gladly encounter, and would almost—nay, quite enjoy.”
“You do not know what your aunt has had to go through.”
“A few years make a great difference in a colony. Still, it may be right for me to go out alone and judge for her; but we shall know more if my aunt comes home.”
“Yes, I could trust a good deal to her. She has much of your mother’s sense. Well, you must settle it as you can with Meta’s people! I do not think they love the pretty creature better than I have done from the first minute we saw her—don’t you remember it, Norman?”
“Remember it? Do I not? From the frosted cedar downwards! It was the first gem of spring in that dreary winter. What a Fairyland the Grange was to me!”
“You may nearly say the same of me,” confessed Dr. May, smiling; “the sight of that happy little sunny spirit, full of sympathy and sweetness, always sent me brighter on my way. Wherever you may be, Norman, I am glad you have her, being one apt to need a pocket sunbeam.”
“I hope my tendencies are in no danger of depressing her!” said Norman, startled. “If so—”
“No such thing—she will make a different man of you. You have been depressed by—that early shock, and the gap at our own fireside—all that we have shared together, Norman. To see you begin on a new score, with a bright home of your own, is the best in this world that I could wish for you, though I shall live over my own twenty-two years in thinking of you, and that sweet little fairy. But now go, Norman—she will be watching for you and news of Margaret. Give her all sorts of love from me.”