‘If you but knew the day I have passed!’ cried Carrie. ‘Come, Phil, take me to walk somewhere; I am near stifled with sitting in my aunt’s chamber listening to her symptoms and reading the Gentlewoman’s Journal.’
‘We had best keep on the road, then; the fields are heavy walking to-day,’ said Phil, and they stepped out along the road very well pleased with each other. It struck Carrie, however, that her companion scarcely looked so cheerful as he had done the day before; perhaps this dull weather affected his spirits, she thought.
‘Tell me, what is your father like?’ asked Phil suddenly. Carrie was rather surprised, but she answered with eager pride:—
‘Tall above the common, and with eyes as blue as mine; and every one depends on him: half London come to him to be cured.’ Phil walked along in silence for a little.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Carrie; ‘you seem quiet to-day.’
‘I was thinking—thinking of my father,’ said Phil, then turning towards her with his sudden impulsive manner he burst out, ‘ ’Twould be strange to feel after that fashion for one’s father! I’ll tell you what my father is; I am so like him I can see—yes, see—straight into his mind, and I know every thought that passes through it. All my life I’ve lived with him, and had everything from his hand, and for the life of me, Carrie, I cannot trust him!’
‘Oh, Phil, have a care what you say!’ exclaimed Carrie, but Phil, fairly driven on by the current of his words, continued without heeding her—
‘Ninety-nine times he’d bless you, the hundredth time he’d curse you; his kindness, when he chooses, can’t be known, and when it comes to an end he’s as hard as these flints. Oh, but he is not bad through and through either, only like a rotten fruit—one bite so good and the next all gone to corruption. I sometimes look and look at him and wonder how ’twill end—the good or the bad. I’d like to have a bet on him, I’d back the devil in him though, and I’d win. And for all this, Carrie, when he talks to me, as he will sometimes for hours, ’tis all I can do not to worship him. He understands me full as well as I understand him, that’s the strange thing, and he knows I know his heart. When I look at him and think about myself, I think sometimes that I am doomed to perdition. I’ll go his way, only quicker, and that’s the way that leads——’
All of a sudden Phil stopped, pointing down to the ground ominously.
‘No,’ said Carrie; ‘for your eyes are open.’