There was another couple at the old home to welcome the sun-burned travellers, for Sir Cheltnam Burwood never entered Ralph Elthorne’s doors again, but passed out of sight entirely, living, it was said, in Paris and Baden. So that when the vicar’s son came to Hightoft as Captain Beck, his welcome was warm as he could wish, and his patience met with its reward.
“That’s the worst of it, my dear,” said Ralph Elthorne, wrinkling up his brow, as he wheeled himself along the drive in the bright sunshine. “I don’t want nursing, only helping about, and yet, now you are here, I feel sometimes as if I should like to be ill again, to wake up and see your dear face watching by my side. And so Sir Denton resigns his post at the hospital to Neil, eh?”
“Yes; and we must go up at once.”
“Tut, tut, tut! you seem only just to have come. Here is Neil. I say, my dear boy: about this hospital. You don’t want money?”
“No, father; certainly not.”
“Then throw it up. Come and settle down here. I can’t spare Cicely. I can’t, indeed.”
“I’m afraid you must, sir,” said Neil, laughing, “unless she says I am to go to work alone. Not a habit of hers, eh, my dear?”
“Bah! You two are children. Anyone would think you had been married five days ago, instead of five years. Then look here: I shall give up the old place and come and live in town.”
“No,” said Neil; “only to visit us now and then. You could not exist healthily away from your gardens and your farm. Besides, Isabel and Saxa.”
“And your grandchildren,” said Lady Cicely. “There again,” the old man cried testily, “that’s the worst of you two: you are always right. Is a man never to have his own way here?”