Now, if I was a coward, it was not for myself this time. The avalanche of ill-words I knew must fall—but it should not fall on him, if I could help it.
"Jump up on your cart, John. Let me see how well you can drive. There—good-bye, for the present. Are you going to the tan-yard?"
"Yes—for the rest of the day." And he made a face as if he did not quite revel in that delightful prospect. No wonder!
"I'll come and see you there this afternoon."
"No?"—with a look of delighted surprise. "But you must not—you ought not."
"But I WILL!" And I laughed to hear myself actually using that phrase. What would Jael have said?
What—as she arrived just in time to receive a half-malicious, half-ceremonious bow from John, as he drove off—what that excellent woman did say I have not the slightest recollection. I only remember that it did not frighten and grieve me as such attacks used to do; that, in her own vernacular, it all "went in at one ear, and out at t'other;" that I persisted in looking out until the last glimmer of the bright curls had disappeared down the sunshiny road—then shut the front door, and crept in, content.
Between that time and dinner I sat quiet enough even to please Jael. I was thinking over the beautiful old Bible story, which latterly had so vividly impressed itself on my mind; thinking of Jonathan, as he walked "by the stone Ezel," with the shepherd-lad, who was to be king of Israel. I wondered whether he would have loved him, and seen the same future perfection in him, had Jonathan, the king's son, met the poor David keeping his sheep among the folds of Bethlehem.
When my father came home he found me waiting in my place at table. He only said, "Thee art better then, my son?" But I knew how glad he was to see me. He gave token of this by being remarkably conversible over our meal—though, as usual, his conversation had a sternly moral tone, adapted to the improvement of what he persisted in considering my "infant" mind. It had reference to an anecdote Dr. Jessop had just been telling him—about a little girl, one of our doctor's patients, who in some passionate struggle had hurt herself very much with a knife.
"Let this be a warning to thee, my son, not to give way to violent passions." (My good father, thought I, there is little fear.) "For, this child—I remember her father well, for he lived at Kingswell here; he was violent too, and much given to evil ways before he went abroad—Phineas, this child, this miserable child, will bear the mark of the wound all her life."