There was silence all through the room. No one answered. My master still sat half-turned and looking up at her. Mrs. Janet had left the window and was facing us. Her hands were held in the attitude of knitting, but the needles did not move, nor did she try to speak. I saw them all without knowing that I looked. At last Mistress Dorothy spoke again.
'Willie,' she said—the colour had flushed into her face, and its earnestness made her beautiful to look at—'Willie, not to every one is granted the opportunity of a great self-sacrifice. If God has willed that your path should be very difficult, do not be afraid to walk in it, for He will surely help you. Do not think so much of what you may do, as of what you can do—of what you can give up at His call. Choose the highest, for it will lead you nearer to Him. I am a weak woman. I know I should not be strong enough to walk in your hard path; but Willie'—she came near to me and took my hand,—'hitherto you have been so noble and so true. Brave heart, be faithful to the end.'
The kind words, so unlooked for, so undeserved, came too suddenly upon me. I had so nearly failed, and she said this. I kissed her hand—
When I looked up again, the tears were raining down her face, Master Caleb's eyes were shaded by his hand, and Mrs. Janet was in the window, standing with her back to us.
They say that to every cloud there is a silver lining. I was very sure that there were clouds on my horizon, but not quite so certain about the silver lining. If there was one at all, it must have been Jock Clifford.
For when you are in trouble there is a great deal of comfort to be got out of a child's affection.
In those days, after Matt Clifford had received my answer to his question in cold silence—when Martha would not let Hildred go near our house, and had forbidden her, as nearly as she could, to speak to me—when my father never opened his lips but to complain of me, I fell back with a singular feeling of refreshment and consolation, on my one staunch friend Jock.
He had been my shadow ever since, some nine or ten years ago, he began to stand alone on his sturdy little legs. Robin and Walter, his twin elder brothers, had no time to notice him. They were absorbed in a never-ending struggle, which of them should have the upper hand—a struggle that had begun as long ago as when, two red-faced babies, they lay heads and tails in the same cradle. It never seemed likely to be settled in their life-time, and it made them very quarrelsome, and quite inseparable.
So Jock, left to himself, bestowed all his company upon me. When one is in disgrace with well nigh all the world—and very few people made up 'all the world' to me,—it is at all events something to have a friend left, in whose eyes the idea of your doing anything wrong is a matter of simple impossibility—it is something, even though the friend be only eleven years old.