“My housekeeper ought to have reminded me, when I told her I was going out,” continued he; “it was excessively careless of her to forget; I shall speak to her about it.”
“If you usually depend upon her for those sort of things—” began Hilary, and then stopped suddenly.
“Besides, who could ever have supposed that people would be so mad as to go out in such weather at all?” added he, determined to be angry with somebody. “These old women have no more sense than a post; it was irrational, and I really think they must have intended to vex and annoy me.”
“I think they are hardly to blame for keeping an appointment,” said she; “they could not tell you would not be there, and, perhaps, were as much inconvenienced by the weather as you could have been, had you been present.”
“I don’t know that; they are used to rough it; and there is a sad spirit of spite and ill-will prevalent among them; a more selfish, ungrateful, thankless, obstinate set, I never met with. They are equally devoid of sense and affection.”
“You do them injustice, I am sure; you would not doubt their affectionate feeling, if you heard their anxiety for my father. But I can not stay with you now. Can you wait here on the chance of my father’s waking, or will you call in again by-and-by?”
Mr. Ufford was too glad to make his escape at that moment, and promising to call again in an hour’s time, he walked off, trying to drown his own sense of wrong, by throwing the blame on every body in the parish except himself.
Mr. Duncan’s attack proved an influenza of a most dangerous nature; and no skill or care from physicians or nurses, could arrest its progress or prevent its effects. He lingered on for nearly three weeks, and then darkness and silence fell on the Vicarage, sorrow and tears filled the village dwellings, for the father was taken from his children, and the pastor from his people, and the place that had known him would know him no more.
The sisters sat together in the gloomy rooms during those long summer days which intervened between the death and the funeral, each, perhaps, going over in silence in her own mind the scenes of childhood so deeply impressed on memory; the happy hours, the kindly-given lesson, the birth-day treat, the pleasant surprise, all coming from him who was now gone from them; each one a joy that never could recur again, but which, although now receding into the shadowy regions of the past, was yet even in recollection a thing to be valued and to be grateful for.
They had some great comforts also. Mr. Paine and his wife contrived to come to them, and he was dearly welcomed, both as friend and priest, and she was an unspeakable solace to Hilary. Their brother-in-law had joined them the week after Sybil came, and his presence relieved them of the painful intrusions which funeral arrangements gave rise to.