“Really and truly,” replied the doctor. “Chisholm tells me he has just seen the letter appointing him to it.”
“Dear me!” cried Cattledon, quite faintly. “Dear me! How very thankful we all ought to be—for Mr. Lake’s sake.”
“I dare say he is thankful,” returned the doctor, swallowing down the rest of his glass of wine, and preparing to leave. “Thank you, no, Miss Deveen; I can’t stay longer: I have one or two sick patients on my hands to-night, and must go to them—and I promised Mrs. Selwyn to look in upon her. Poor thing! this terrible loss has made her really ill. By-the-by,” he added, turning round on his way from the room, “have you heard that she has decided upon her plans, and thinks of leaving shortly?”
“No—has she?” returned Miss Deveen.
“Best thing for her, too—to be up and doing. She has the chance of taking to a little boys’ preparatory school at Brighton; small and select, as the advertisements have it. Some relative of hers has kept it hitherto, has made money by it, and is retiring——”
“Will Mrs. Selwyn like that—to be a schoolmistress?” interrupted Cattledon, craning her neck.
“Rather than vegetate upon her small pittance,” returned the doctor briskly. “She is an active, capable woman; has all her senses about her. Better teach little boys, and live and dress well, than enjoy a solitary joint of meat once a-week and a turned gown once a-year—eh, Johnny Ludlow?”
He caught up his hat, and went out in a bustle. I laughed. Miss Deveen nodded approvingly; not at my laugh, but at Mrs. Selwyn’s resolution.
The stir abroad might have been pretty brisk that evening; we had Dr. Galliard’s word for it: it could have been nothing to what set in the next day. The poor, meek curate—who, however good he might have been to run after, could hardly have been looked upon as an eligible, bonâ-fide prospect—suddenly converted into a rich Rector: six hundred a-year and a parsonage to flourish in! All the ladies, elder and younger, went into a delightful waking-sleep and dreamed dreams.
“Such a mercy!” was the cry; “such a mercy! We might have had some dreadful old drony man here, who does not believe in daily services, and wears a wig on his bald head. Now Mr. Lake, though his hair is getting a little grey, has a most luxuriant and curly crop of it. Beautiful whiskers too.”