Whatever Lally saw any other creature doing, that she desired to essay also. She wanted to run after the lambs, and scamper like the dogs, and be out over the fields with Cuthbert, and trotting behind Agnes and Mrs. Piggott, to dairy, and poultry-yard, and paddock; but it was not to be! The spirit was there—strong, restless, excitable as ever; but the body was changed. No more gallops for Lally on any one’s shoulder—no more charming excursions in Ned’s wheelbarrow—no more clambering up ladders, and lofty thrones on the top of haystacks and corn-ricks—no more playing at hide-and-seek in the hollow—no more running after the ducks, and shrill laughter at seeing them take to the water in order to escape the pursuit of their tiny persecutor—no more searchings after hens that had stolen away to lay—no more of these old happinesses for Lally. Sickness had caught her one day, when his advent was least looked for—caught and put her in a cage, which would not permit her to move far in any direction, against the bars of which the little restless heart fluttered and beat only to its own hurt—a cage from which no human hand could release her, though loving friends were all around, and kindly eyes, often with tears in them, regarded the impatient child.
Tired—tired—always tired! Many and many a time, when Heather, hearing this plaint, lifted her child in her arms, she had to turn aside lest Lally should see she was weeping; but one day Lally, peeping round, beheld the tears on her mother’s face, and said—
“’Oo crying, ma?—is it about Lally? Big, fat lady told Lally she’ll get some-sing when she goes to London, that will make her better as well. When are we going, ma—when?”
And because her own hopes were identical with Lally’s words, Mrs. Dudley did not grieve so much concerning leaving Berrie Down as might otherwise have been the case. As regarded the increase of income, the prospect of greater pecuniary comfort, Heather felt no elation whatever.
If Arthur were satisfied, she could easily make herself satisfied also; but she had little faith that anything in which Mr. Black figured as prime mover would ultimately prove advantageous to her husband.
Besides, if a person have half a million a year, he can but be happy; and Heather knew perfectly well that the secret of being happy, even on two hundred a year, is to be satisfied therewith.
Arthur had never been contented, and she was quite aware that the increase to his income could not make him so. She understood her husband’s peculiarities sufficiently by this time to know that his wants would only grow with what they fed on.
If Mr. Black’s cry were always more capital, Arthur’s had always been a larger revenue.
Looking back over her married life with eyes from which the glamour of early love was now completely cleared away, Heather saw that money matters might have been better with them for years past, had Arthur only been energetic, and strong, and determined, like other men—had he finished his draining instead of leaving it half completed—had he turned up his land and laid out money by degrees, as he could spare it, on that which never proves ungrateful for capital wisely expended, for care judiciously bestowed.
She could not be blind to the fact that, as a rule, they had bought stock dear and sold it cheap—that what Alick had often said, “Arthur is neither master nor man: neither master to give orders and see them carried out, nor man to obey orders if given by anybody else,” was true.