I heard the girls laughing within a stone's throw of where we stood.
“Pray please yourself, Doctor Urquhart; come, or not come; but I can't wait.”
He looked at me with an amused air;—yes, I certainly have the honour of amusing him, as a child or a kitten would—then said,—
“He would be happy to join us.”
I was ashamed of myself for being thus pettish with a person so much older and wiser than I, and who ought to be excused so heartily for any peculiarities he has; yet he vexed me. He does vex me very much, sometimes. I cannot understand why; it is quite a new feeling to be so irritated with anybody. Either it is his manner, whieh is rather variable, sometimes cheerful and friendly, and then again restless and cold; or an uncomfortable sensation of being under control, which I never yet had, even towards my own father. Once, when I was contesting something with him, Augustus noticed it, and said, laughing:—
“Oh, the Doctor makes everybody do what he likes: you'd better give in at once. I always do.”
But I cannot, and I will not.
To feel vexed with a person, to know they have the power of vexing you—that a chance word or look can touch you to the quick, make you feel all over in a state of irritation, as if all the world went wrong, and you were ready to do anything cross, or sullen, or childishly naughty—until another chance word or look happens to set you right again—this is an extremely uncomfortable state of things.
I must guard against it. I must not allow my temper to get way. Sensitive it is, I am aware, quick to feel sore, and to take offence; but I am not a thoroughly ill-tempered woman. Doctor Urquhart does not think so: he told me he did not. One day, when I had been very cross with him, he said “I had done him no harm; that I often did him good.”
Me—to do good to Doctor Urquhart! What an extraordinary thing!