“Oh, I’m not afraid of Mr. Bell; but I am afraid of this Leonards. I must tell Frederick. What did Leonards look like?”
“A bad-looking fellow, I can assure you, miss. Whiskers such as I should be ashamed to wear—they are so red. And for all he said he’d got a confidential situation, he was dressed in fustian just like a working-man.”
It was evident that Frederick must go. Go, too, when he had so completely vaulted into his place in the family, and promised to be such a stay and staff to his father and sister. Go, when his cares for the living mother, and sorrow for the dead, seemed to make him one of those peculiar people who are bound to us by a fellow-love for them that are taken away. Just as Margaret was thinking all this, sitting over the drawing-room fire—her father restless and uneasy under the pressure of this newly-aroused fear, of which he had not as yet spoken—Frederick came in, his brightness dimmed, but the extreme violence of his grief passed away. He came up to Margaret, and kissed her forehead.
“How wan you look, Margaret!” said he in a low voice. “You have been thinking of everybody, and no one has thought of you. Lie on this sofa—there is nothing for you to do.”
“That is the worst,” said Margaret, in a sad whisper. But she went and lay down, and her brother covered her feet with a shawl and then sate on the ground by her side; and the two began to talk together in a subdued tone.
Margaret told him all that Dixon had related of her interview with young Leonards. Frederick’s lips closed with a long whew of dismay.
“I should just like to have it out with that young fellow. A worse sailor was never on board ship—nor a much worse man either. I declare, Margaret—you know the circumstances of the whole affair?”
“Yes, mamma told me.”
“Well, when all the sailors who were good for anything were indignant with our captain, this fellow to curry favour—pah! And to think of his being here! Oh, if he’d a notion I was within twenty miles of him, he’d ferret me out to pay all old grudges. I’d rather anybody had the hundred pounds they think I am worth than that rascal. What a pity poor old Dixon could not be persuaded to give me up, and make a provision for her old age!”
“Oh, Frederick, hush! Don’t talk so.”