“Suppose we ask him to give up practice at once,” said Margaret, “that we may have him always with us. No, no, Hester; we must consider him first, and ourselves next, and let him have his profession all to himself, and as much of it as he likes.”
“Ourselves!” cried Hester, contemptuously.
“Well, yourself, then,” said Margaret, smiling. “I only put myself in that I might lecture myself at the same time with you.”
“Lecture away, dear,” said Hester, “till you make me as reasonable as if I had no husband to care for.”
Margaret might have asked whether Hester had been reasonable when she had had neither husband nor lover to care for; but, instead of this, she opened the piano, and tempted her sister away from her watch to practise a duet.
“I will tell you what I am thinking of,” cried Hester, breaking off in the middle of a bar of the second page. “Perhaps you thought me hasty just now; but you do not know what I had in my head. You remember how late Edward was called out, the night before last?”
“To Mrs Marsh’s child? Yes; it was quite dark when he went.”
“There was no moon. Mr Marsh wanted to send a servant back with him as far as the high-road: but he was sure he knew the way. He was riding very fast, when his horse suddenly stopped, and almost threw him over its head. He spurred in vain; the animal only turned round and round, till a voice called from somewhere near, ‘Stop there, for God’s sake! Wait till I bring a light.’ A man soon came with a lantern, and where do you think Edward found himself? On the brink of a mill-dam! Another step in the dark night, and he might have been heard of no more!”
Margaret was not at all surprised that Hester covered her face with her hands at the end of this very disagreeable anecdote.
“It is clear,” said she, “that Edward is the person who wants lecturing. We must bid him not ride very fast on dark nights, on roads that he does not know. But I have a high opinion of this horse of his. One of the two is prudent; and that is a great comfort. And, for the present, there is the consolation that there are no mill-dams in the way to the almshouses, and that it is broad daylight. So let us go on with our duet,—or shall we begin again?”