I smiled, and said his old play-fellow was very much obliged to him.
So, this business is not so engrossing, but that Doctor Urquhart can find time to pay visits somewhere. And he had been inquiring for me. Still he might have made the inquiry at our own door. Ought people, even if they do lead a busy life, to forget ordinary courtesy—accepting hospitality, and neglecting it—cultivating acquaintance and then dropping it. I think not; all the respect in the world cannot make one put aside one's common sense judgment of another's actions. Perhaps the very respect makes one more tenacious that no single action should be even questionable. I did think, then, and even to-day I have thought sometimes, that Doctor Urquhart has been somewhat in the wrong towards us at Rockmount. But as to acknowledging it to any of them at home—never!
Mrs. Granton discussed him a little, and spoke gratefully of Colin's obligations to him, and what a loss it would be for Colin when the regiment left the camp.
“How fortunate that your brother-in-law sold out when he did. He could not well have done so now, when there is a report of their being ordered on active service shortly. Colin says we are likely to have war again, but I do hope not.”
“Yes,” I said.
And just then Colin came to fetch me to the greenhouses to choose a camellia for my hair.
Likely to have war again! When Mrs. Granton left me to dress, I sat over my bed-room fire, thinking—I hardly know what. All sorts of visions went flitting through my mind—of scenes I have heard talked about, in hospital, in battle, on the battle-field afterwards. Especially one, which Augustus has often described, when he woke up, stiff and cold, on the moonlight plain, from under his dead horse, and saw Dr. Urquhart standing over him.
Colin whistling through the corridor,—Mrs.
Granton's lively “Are you ready, my dear?” made me conscious that this would not do.
I stood up, and dressed myself in the silver-gray silk I wore at the ball; I tried to stick the red camellia in my hair, but the buds all broke off under my fingers, and I had to go down without it. It was all the same. I did not much care. However, Colin insisted on going with a lantern to hunt for another flower, and his mother took, a world of pains to fasten it in, and make me look “pretty.”