I was silent.
“This picture; the moorland, hills, and lake,—your pond is as wide and bright as a lake—will always put me in mind of Rasselas, but one cannot live for ever in our 'Happy Valley,' nor in our lazy camp either. I often wish I had more work to do.”
“How—and where?”
As soon as I had put it I blushed at the intrusiveness of this question. In all he tells me of his affairs I listen, but never dare to enquire, aware that I have no right to ask of him more than he chooses to reveal.
Right or not, he was not offended; he replied to me fully and long; talking more as if I had been a man and his confidential friend, than only a simple girl, who has in this at least some sense, that she feels she can understand him.
It appears, that in peace-time, the duties of a regimental surgeon are almost nothing, except in circumstances where they become as hopeless as they are heavy; such as the cases of unhealthy barracks, and other avoidable causes of mortality, which Doctor Urquhart and Augustus discussed, and which he has since occasionally referred to, when talking to papa and me. He told me with what anxiety he had tried to set on foot reforms in these matters; how all his plans had been frustrated, by the tardiness of Government; and how he was hopeless of ever attaining his end. Indeed he showed me an official letter, received that morning, finally dismissing the question.
“You see, Miss Theodora,
'To mend the world's a vast design.'
too vast for my poor powers.”
“Are you discouraged?”