Sydney vehemently beckoned his father, who left the apricot he and Margaret were examining by the surgery wall, and came to see what he was wanted for.
“You see,” said he to Hope, when the matter was explained, “I have naturally been rather anxious to bring this about this meeting between you and the young man. In a small place like this, it is painful to have everybody quarrelling, and not to be able to get one’s friends about one, for fear they should brawl in one’s very drawing-room. Mr Rowland is of my mind there; and I know it would gratify him if I were to take some notice of this young man. I really could hardly refuse, knowing how handsomely Mr Rowland always speaks of you and yours, and believing Mr Walcot to be a very respectable, harmless young man. If I thought it would injure your interests in the least, I would see him at Cape Horn before I would invite him, of course: you must be aware of that. And I should not think of asking you to meet Mrs Rowland; that would be going too far. But Mrs Grey wishes that your wife and Margaret should visit these ruins that we were always prevented from getting to last year: and Mr Walcot is anxious to see them too; and he has been civil to Sydney; and, in short, I believe that Sydney half promised that he should go with us.”
“Say no more,” replied Hope. “You will have no difficulty with us. I really know nothing against Mr Walcot. He had a perfect right to settle where he pleased. Whether the manner of doing it was handsome or otherwise, is of far more consequence to himself than to me, or to any one else.”
“I wish we all viewed the matter as you do. If the ladies had your temper, we should have a heaven upon earth. But they take things up so warmly, you see, when their feelings are interested for anybody; Mrs Rowland for one, and my wife for another. I hardly know what she will say to the idea of our having Walcot with us. Let us go and see.”
“I have a word to say to you first. Do you know of any one who wants a horse? I am going to dispose of mine.”
“Mr Walcot wants a horse,” said Sydney, delighted at the idea of solving a difficulty.
Hope smiled, and told Mr Grey that he had rather sell his horse at a distance. Mr Walcot had already hired the boy Charles, whom Hope had just dismissed; and if he obtained the horse too, the old servant who knew his way to every patient’s door, all the country round—it really would look too like the unpopular man patronising his opponent. Besides, it would be needlessly publishing in Deerbrook that the horse was given up.
“What is the fault of your horse?” asked Mr Grey, rousing himself from an absent fit.
“Merely that he eats, and therefore is expensive. I cannot afford now to keep a horse,” he declared, in answer to Mr Grey’s stare of amazement. “I have so few patients now out of walking reach, that I have no right to keep a horse. I can always hire, you know, from Reeves.”
“Upon my soul, I am sorry to hear this—extremely sorry to hear it. Matters must have gone further than I had any idea of. My dear fellow, we must see how we can serve you. You must let me accommodate you—indeed you must—rather than give up your horse.”