“I hope not,” said the Doctor, sadly and gravely.
I said I was sorry for having made a jest upon his favourite doctrine of repentance and restoration of sinners, which he seemed always both to preach and to practice.
“Do I? Perhaps. Do you not think it's very much, needed in this world?”
I said, I had not lived long enough in the world to find out.
“I forgot how young you were.”
He had once, in his direct way, asked my age, and I had told him, much disposed likewise to return the question, but was afraid. Sometimes I feel quite at home with him, as if I could say anything to him, and then again he makes me, not actually afraid—thank goodness, I never was afraid of any man yet, and hope I never shall be—but shy and quiet. I suppose it is because he is so very good; because in his presence my little follies and wickednesses hide their heads. I cease perplexing myself about them, or about myself at all, and only think—not of him so much as of something higher and better than either him or me. Surely this cannot be wrong.
The bee question settled, we sat down, silent, listening to the rain pattering on the glass roof of the greenhouse. It was rather a dreary day. I began thinking of Lisabel's leaving more than was good for me; and, with that penetrative kindness which I have often noticed in him, Doctor Urquhart turned my sad thoughts away, by various information about Treherne Court, and the new relations of our Lisa—not many. I said, “happily, she would have neither brother or sister-in-law.”
“Happily! You cannot be in earnest?”
I half wished I had not been, and yet I could not but speak my mind—that brothers and sisters, in law or in blood, were often anything but a blessing.
“I must emphatically differ from you there. I think it is, with few exceptional cases, the greatest misfortune to be an only child. Few are so naturally good, or reared under such favourable circumstances, that such a position does not do them harm. A lonely childhood and youth may make a great man, a good man, but it rarely makes a happy man. Better all the tussles and troubles of family life, where the angles of character are rubbed off, and its inclinations to morbidness, sensitiveness, and egotism knocked down. I think it is a great wonder to see Treherne such a good fellow as he is, considering he has been an only child.”