“My dearest, you will tell me what present I can send them when at last I am forced to tear myself away. A good present that will make up to them—a chest of tea, or a barrel of wine, or—— But I don’t want to go away, Lily; I would rather stay here and see you every day until I am forced to go back to my work.”
“Oh, and so would I!” cried Lily; “but,” she added, with a sigh, “we must think of them. Mr. Blythe sits always, always in this room. It is the sunny room in the house, and he likes it best. But you see he has gone into his little study this day or two—which is very dreary—all because we are here.”
“Very considerate of him,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “if that is a reason for going away, that they now leave us sometimes alone. I fear it will not move me, Lily; you must find a better than that.”
“Oh, Ronald, will you not see?” cried Lily in distress. But what could a girl do? She could not put understanding into his eyes nor consideration into his heart. He was willing to take advantage of these good people, and the inducement was strong. She spoke against her own heart when she urged him to go away, and she was glad to be laughed out of her scruples, to be told of the “good present” that would make up for every thing, of the gratitude that he would always feel, and his conviction that he gave very little trouble, and added next to nothing to their expenses. “Broth is not expensive,” he said, “and the grouse, you know, Lily, the grouse!” Lily turned her head away, sick at heart. Oh, it was not how he should speak of the people who were so kind to him; but still, when she mounted Rory—now quite docile and accustomed to trot every day into Kinloch-Rugas—in the afternoon, she could not but be glad to think that she might still come to-morrow, that there was at least another day.
One of these afternoons the parlor was full of people, under whose eyes Lily could not continue to sit by the side of the sofa and minister to the robust invalid’s wants. There was the doctor, who gave him a little slap on his leg and said: “I congratulate ye on a perfect cure. You can get up and walk when you like, like the man in the Bible.” And the school-master’s wife, who said: “Eh, what a good thing for you, Mr. Lumsden, and you been on your back so long.” And there was the assistant and successor, Mr. Douglas, who was visibly anxious to get rid of all interlopers and speak a word to Helen. Oh, why did he not follow Helen when she went out to open the door for her visitors, and leave Lily free to say once more to Ronald, but more energetically: “You must go!”
“I was wanting to say, sir,” said Mr. Douglas, “and I may add that I have Miss Eelen’s opinion all on my side, that I would like very much if you would say a parting word to the lads that are going out to Canada. We have taken a great deal of trouble with them, and a word from the minister——”
“You are the minister yourself, Douglas; they know more of you than they do of me.”
“Not so, Mr. Blythe. I am your assistant, and Miss Eelen she is your daughter and the best friend they ever had; but it’s your blessing the callants want, and a word from you——”
“My blessing!” the old man said, with an uneasy laugh. “You’re forgetting, my young man, that there’s no sacerdotal pretensions in the auld Kirk.”
“You blessed them when they were christened, sir, and you blessed them and gave them the right hand of fellowship when they came to the Lord’s table. I’m thinking nothing of sacerdotalism. I’m thinking of human nature. We have no bishops, but while we have ordained ministers we must always have fathers in God.”