More than that he did not say, nor had I a right to ask. No right! What was I, to be wanting rights—to feel that in some sense I deserved them—that if I had them I should know how to use them. For it is next to impossible to be so sorry about one's friends without having also some little power to do them good, if they would only give you leave.
All this while Colin and his mother were running hither and thither in search of the carriage, which had disappeared again. As we stood, a blast of moorland wind almost took my breath away. Doctor Urquhart turned, and wrapped me up closer.
“What must be done? You will get your death of cold, and I cannot shelter you. Oh, if I could!”
Then I took courage. There was only a minute more. Perhaps, and the news of threatened war darted through my mind like an arrow—perhaps the last minute we might ever be together in all our lives. My life—I did not recollect it just then, but his, busy indeed, yet so wandering, solitary, and homeless—he once told me that ours was the only family hearth he had been familiar at for twenty years. No, I am sure it was not wrong, either to think what I thought, or to say it.
“Doctor Urquhart, I wish you would come to Rockmount. It would do you good, and papa good, and all of us; for we are rather dull now Lisabel is gone. Do come.”
I waited for an answer, but none was given. No excuse, or apology, or even polite acknowledgment. Politeness!—that would have been the sharpest unkindness of all.
Then they overtook us, and the chance was over.
Colin advanced, but Doctor Urquhart put me into the carriage himself, and as Colin was restoring the plaid, said rather irritably:—“No, no, let her wrap herself in it, going home.”
Not another word passed between us, except that, as I remembered afterwards, just before they came up, he had said, “Good-bye,” hastily adding to it, “God bless you.”
Some people's words—people who usually express very little—rest in one's mind strangely. Why should he say “God bless you?” Why did he call me “child?”