Margaret found more good news at home. In the first place, the door was opened to her by Morris. Hester stood behind to witness the meeting. She had her bonnet on: she was going with her husband to see Mrs Howell, and make some provision for her comfort: but she had waited a little while, in hopes that Margaret would return, and be duly astonished to see Morris.
“You must make tea for each other, and be comfortable while we are away,” said Hester. “We will go now directly, that we may be back as early as we can.”
“I have several things to tell you,” said Margaret, “when you return: and one now, brother, which must not be delayed. Platt and his child are dead, and coffins must be sent. The sooner the better, or we shall lose the poor woman too.”
Hope promised to speak to the undertaker as he went by.
“We have become very familiar with death, Morris, since you went away,” said Margaret, as she obliged her old friend to sit down by the fire, and prepared to make tea for both.
“That is why you see me here, Miss Margaret. Every piece of news I could get of this place was worse than the last; and I could perceive from your last letter, that you had sickness all about you; and I could not persuade myself but that it was my duty to come and be useful, and to take care of you, my dear, if I may say so.”
“And now you are here, I trust you may stay—I trust we may be justified in keeping you. We have meat every day now, Morris,—at least when we have time to cook it. Since my brother has been attending so many of Mr Jones’s family, we have had meat almost every day.”
“Indeed, my dear, I don’t know how you could keep up without it, so busy as I find you are among the sick;—busy night and day, my mistress tells me, till the people have got to call you ‘the good lady.’ You do not look as if you had lost much of your natural rest: but I know how the mind keeps the body up. Yours is an earnest mind, Margaret, that will always keep you up: but, my dear, I do hope it has been an easy mind too. You will excuse my saying so.”
Margaret more than excused it, but she could not immediately answer. The tears trembled in her eyes, and her lip quivered when she would have spoken. Morris stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead, as if she had been still a child, and whispered that all things ended well in God’s own time.
“Oh, yes! I know,” said Margaret. “Has Hester told you how prosperous we are growing? I do not mean only about money. We are likely to have enough of that too, for my brother’s old patients have almost all sent for him again: but we care the less about that from having discovered that we were as happy with little money as with much. But it is a satisfaction and pleasure to find my brother regarded more and more as he ought to be: and yet greater to see how nobly he deserves the best that can be thought of him.”