“What a wonderful girl you are, you dear thing!” said Dora, caressing her; “having all this on your mind, and yet teaching and talking, as if nothing had been the matter. How did you see, Fanny? for I never discovered any change in Hilary.”
“Perhaps, Dora,” said Mrs. Paine, “because you are more accustomed to attend to your own feelings than those of other people.”
“Well, I am afraid I am; I want to know how to cure that. But do tell me something more about this brother of yours; how long has he been away? what is he, a captain, too? or what?”
“He is only a mate, Dora; but has served long enough to be promoted, only we have no interest. But the best part of Captain Hepburn’s letter, Mrs. Paine, is, that he hopes to get him leave to come home for his health, and then we shall have him here again!” Hilary clasped her hands in a very unusual ecstacy.
“And what sort of interest does it need to make a young man a lieutenant?” inquired Dora, again. “Could papa do it for you?”
“interest at the Admiralty,” replied Mrs. Paine. “I hardly think Mr. Barham would like to trouble himself about it, because he has a nephew at sea himself.”
“Oh, yes! cousin Peter—I can not bear him, Hilary; I hope your brother Maurice is not like our cousin Peter.”
“Absurd, Dora!” ejaculated Isabel; “Peter is a very good sort of young man.”
However, Dora’s inquiries were not to be stopped by Isabel’s ejaculations; and before she took leave of the Vicarage, she had made herself mistress of the rank which Maurice now held, of the time he had served, and the wished-for promotion he deserved to attain.
Maurice’s illness, and his expected return to England, so excited and engrossed the minds of the family at the Vicarage, that another piece of news, which reached them the same time, was comparatively insignificant; this was the projected return of Charles Huyton.