‘She is like many parish ladies,’ said his daughter, who was not without experience of such. ‘She thinks she should be allowed to meddle with everything, because her motives are good. I don’t doubt that she’s good and kind in her way, but she has nothing to do with you and me.’
‘Still she was always very nice to your mother; and when you are gone I may be thankful to have her come to see me. There are times when we have both been very glad to see her coming in. Sometimes she would bring the papers, or Punch, or a new book—especially in the winter afternoons it was a pleasure—and if I am to be left without even John——’
‘But you are not to be left without John. And nothing has passed that need keep her from coming to see you. She will like to come and be kind. It is as good a way of filling up vacant time as any other,’ said Emily, with an experience of such matters which probably justified a little harshness of speech.
‘I shall be left very lonely,’ said the old man, with the break in his voice which was his substitute for weeping. ‘There is Mr. Cattley too. He was always very kind: but now you’ve gone and made me break with him—after giving him all that trouble with his brother about the boy.’
‘Father,’ she said, ‘I thought we had settled that question. I have never interfered with the boy. All his life, at least since he was a child, he has been with you: and you saw last night what it has come to, and what ideas he has on the subject. I don’t complain—I am not saying a word. Wait till I complain before you speak. But so it is: there is only one subject on which I am determined, and you know what that is too. I will not have the past made known to him. I will not have him find out—no, not for the world.’
‘And how should he have found out by going to Liverpool?’ said old Sandford, querulously, ‘a boy serving his time in a foundry, is it likely that he would go raking up old stories in such a very different sphere?’
‘Everything is likely that we don’t want to happen,’ she said.
‘And now,’ cried the old man, ‘all’s undone that was settled before she left me, my poor dear. She has gone to heaven carrying a false idea with her; thinking of things that were never going to happen. Do you call that keeping faith with those that are gone? I will never be able to explain it to her, without putting the blame upon you.’
‘I hope it will be long before you have to explain it to her—and I don’t mind about the blame. I can bear it, father; put it upon me.’
‘It is all very easy for you to speak,’ he said, in his broken voice, ‘but you put me all in a muddle, and I’m growing old, as Mrs. Egerton said.’