Once only did Joshua scarify the sore. In an interval of pain he said with his customary abruptness,
“And so that pretty lass of thy master’s is going to throw herself away on the wild rascal who pitched thee over the wall?”
Jabez could not trust himself to answer save by a movement of his head.
“Ugh! she’d better ha’ takken a fancy to thee!”
Half-an-hour or more elapsed. Waking from a doze, he said—
“Dost thou remember my telling thee to look at ‘Hogarth’s Apprentice’ in Chadwick’s parlour?”
“Indeed, I do! They have influenced my life,” answered Mr. Clegg with a sigh, pouring out a dose of medicine as he spoke.
“More physic, eh? Ugh! doctors kill more than they cure with their stuff! Ay, lad, thah’st mounted up, thou’lt be a master thyself some day, if thou dost not forget that Jabez must be an honourable man!”
“I never did forget it sir, even though the apprentice boy was mad enough to aspire to his master’s daughter! But losing her, I have learned a new lesson. The prayer of the olden Jabez, which has been mine night and morn from boyhood, was a prayer for self, and self only, and I had no right to look for an answer to all the hopes I based upon it. If I have not been ‘kept from evil,’ and it has ‘grieved me,’ I prayed for myself alone, and in grief I have my answer. Prayer should take a wider range.”