“My love,” said I, “do not alarm yourself so terribly; the boy shall be inoculated to-morrow.”
“To-morrow! Oh, my dearest love, do not put it off till to-morrow,” said Lucy; “let him be inoculated to-day.”
“Well, my dear, only keep your mind easy, and he shall be inoculated to-day, if possible; surely you must know I love the boy as well as you do, and am as anxious about him as you can be.”
“I am sure of it, my love,” said Lucy; “I meant no reproach. But since you have decided that the boy shall be vaccined, let us send directly for the surgeon, and have it done, and then he will be safe.”
She caught hold of the bell-cord to ring for a servant: I stopped her.
“No, my dear, don’t ring,” said I; “for the men are both out. I have sent one to the library for the new Letters on Education, and the other to the rational toy-shop for some things I want for the child.”
“Then if the servants are out, I had better walk to the surgeon’s, and bring him back with me.”
“No, my dear,” said I; “I must see Mr. L———‘s children first. I am going out immediately; I will call upon them: they are healthy children; we can have the vaccine infection from them, and I will inoculate the boy myself.”
Lucy submitted. I take a melancholy pleasure in doing her justice, by recording every argument that she used, and every persuasive word that she said to me, upon this occasion. I am anxious to show that she was not in the least to blame. I alone am guilty! I alone ought to have been the sufferer! It will scarcely be believed—I can hardly believe it myself, that, after all Lucy said to me, I delayed two hours, and stayed to finish making an extract from Rousseau’s Emilius before I set out. When I arrived at Mr. L———‘s, the children were just gone out to take an airing, and I could not see them. A few hours may sometimes make all the difference between health and sickness, happiness and misery: I put off till the next day the inoculation of my child.
In the mean time a coachman came to me to be hired: my boy was playing about the room, and, as I afterward collected, went close up to the man, and, while I was talking, stood examining a greyhound upon his buttons. I asked the coachman many questions, and kept him for some time in the room. Just as I agreed to take him into my service, he said he could not come to live with me till the next week, because one of his children was ill of the small-pox.