Thomas lifted his eyes in some surprise. “I have taken all that you have desired me.”
“No, you have not. I prescribe tranquillity of mind and body. You take neither.”
Thomas Godolphin leaned a little nearer to the doctor, and paused before he answered. “Tranquillity of mind for me has passed. I can never know it again. Were my life to be prolonged, the great healer of all things, Time, might bring it me in a degree: but, for that, I shall not live. Snow, you must know this to be the case, under the calamity which has fallen upon my head.”
“It ought to have fallen upon your brother’s head, not upon yours,” was the rejoinder of the surgeon, spoken crossly, in his inability to contradict Mr. Godolphin’s words. “At any rate, you cannot go on any longer facing this business in person.”
“I must indeed. There is no help for it.”
“And suppose it kills you?” was the retort.
“If I could help going, I would,” said Thomas. “But there is no alternative. One of us must be there; and George cannot be. You are not ignorant of the laws of bankruptcy.”
“It is another nail in your coffin,” growled Mr. Snow, as he took his leave.
He went straight to the Bank. He asked to see Mrs. George Godolphin. Maria, in her pretty morning dress of muslin, was seated with Meta on her knees. She had been reading the child a Bible story, and was now talking to her in a low voice, her own face, so gentle, so pure, and so sad, bent towards the little one’s upturned to it.
“Well, young lady, and how are all the dolls?” was the surgeon’s greeting. “Will you send her away to play with them, Mrs. George?”