“Why, no,” was the response, as if after due consideration. “If they are there at all they ought to stand.”
“Oh, I can’t get you to talk seriously,” rejoined Rhoda, with an air of vexation, whilst the others were good-naturedly laughing. “Mr. Smithson thinks there ought to be female members of Parliament.”
“Does he? Have the girls told you that there’s a nightingale in Mr. Williams’s orchard?”
It was always thus. Dr. Madden did not care to discuss even playfully the radical notions which Rhoda got from her objectionable friend. His daughters would not have ventured to express an opinion on such topics when he was present; apart with Miss Nunn, they betrayed a timid interest in whatever proposition she advanced, but no gleam of originality distinguished their arguments.
After tea the little company fell into groups—some out of doors beneath the apple-trees, others near the piano at which Virginia was playing Mendelssohn. Monica ran about among them with her five-year-old prattle, ever watched by her father, who lounged in a canvas chair against the sunny ivied wall, pipe in mouth. Dr. Madden was thinking how happy they made him, these kind, gentle girls; how his love for them seemed to ripen with every summer; what a delightful old age his would be, when some were married and had children of their own, and the others tended him—they whom he had tended. Virginia would probably be sought in marriage; she had good looks, a graceful demeanour, a bright understanding. Gertrude also, perhaps. And little Monica—ah, little Monica! she would be the beauty of the family. When Monica had grown up it would be time for him to retire from practice; by then he would doubtless have saved money.
He must find more society for them; they had always been too much alone, whence their shyness among strangers. If their mother had but lived!
“Rhoda wishes you to read us something, father,” said his eldest girl, who had approached whilst he was lost in dream.
He often read aloud to them from the poets; Coleridge and Tennyson by preference. Little persuasion was needed. Alice brought the volume, and he selected “The Lotus-Eaters.” The girls grouped themselves about him, delighted to listen. Many an hour of summer evening had they thus spent, none more peaceful than the present. The reader’s cadenced voice blended with the song of a thrush.
“Let us alone.
Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our
lips are dumb.
Let us alone.
What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us—”
There came an interruption, hurried, peremptory. A farmer over at Kingston Seymour had been seized with alarming illness; the doctor must come at once.