Those are the only words of hers I have ever felt displeased with. At the moment they seemed harsh to me; by reason of the pity, which the eye engenders, but the tongue cannot advance. If she had come from that piteous sight, her heart would have been too soft for this.
“It is a good job for everybody else, and a bad one for him,” said Uncle Corny; “he is gone where he addressed himself. He labelled himself—‘To the Devil with care—to be delivered immediately.’ And then he goes and acts as his own porter. You need not look sentimental, Kit. What is England coming to? Lord bless my heart the stuff they talk about ‘the sanctity of human life!’ A good man’s life belongs to God, and a bad one’s to the Devil. And they have got themselves to thank for it.”
A very broad saying is seldom deep; but the general vote was against me. And all being on the right side, of course, they backed it up with buttresses.
“Think of that poor man,” said Kitty, who was always first to see things; “from what you say of his sad condition, and his size, and figure, I am quite sure it is the afflicted prisoner we rescued from the savages. You may talk of things not being guided by a Higher Power, and you may look black if it is hinted that a man shouldn’t shoot his father, and then try to kill my darling Kit; but what can you say, when it comes to light, that but for his own wicked plot, the cruelest and the wickedest that ever entered human heart—or brain, for he never could have owned a heart—if it had not been for that, no doubt, he would have married a lovely girl—though some may call her too pale and thin—and probably have stolen all her money, and no doubt broken her poor heart, as he did his utmost to break mine? And then in the very stroke of death, he tries to murder Kit again! Oh, how can I be sorry that we are safe from him at last?”
“Kitty is right,” Miss Parslow said; “Kit would have killed that man, if he caught him shooting Kitty. And that would have been the very next thing he would have done, if the Lord had spared him.”
To this I could make no reply; for verily I believe it would have been.
“Take your wife home,” said Uncle Corny, who always saw the right thing to do; “she is much excited. Avoid this subject, until you can speak of it calmly. Thank God for all His goodness to you; and let her nurse your wounded hair.”
This made Kitty laugh and pout; and without another word I led her home.
I led my Kitty home, without any fear of losing her again, until, by the will of One who loves us, we bid each other a brief farewell. We live at Honeysuckle Cottage still, and wish to go no further, adding to it, as little growers, like roses, cluster round us. We might lead a gayer and noisier life, if that were to our liking; but we have seen enough of the world to know how nice it is, at a distance. Whatever the greatest people do I can read to Kitty in the evening; and she smiles or sighs in the proper places, without neglecting our own affairs. The puff of the passing world comes to us, like that of a train in the valley; or even as the whiff of a smoker in the lane comes over our wall with a delicate waft, albeit his tobacco is not first-rate.
Moreover we like to be, where pleasant friends drop in, and say—“What a sweet calm is here!” And where Uncle Corny still toddles up at supper-time every evening, and lays his now quivering hand upon the curls of his sturdy Godson Cornelius, and says, “You shall have all this place, my boy; for your rogue of a father is too rich to want it, with all that property in London. Let him grow houses, while you grow trees. Keep the old place on, if you can; and sell your own fruit, if you want to get the money.”