“Well!” cried Mrs. Upround, with both hands lifted, and a high color flowing into her unwrinkled cheeks; “from this day forth I shall never have any confidence in you again. How long—if I may dare to put any sort of question—have you been getting into all this very secret knowledge? And why have I never heard a word of it till now? And not even now, I do believe, through any proper urgency of conscience on your part, but only because I insisted upon knowing. Oh, Dr. Upround, for shame! for shame!”
“My dear, you have no one but yourself to blame,” her husband replied, with a sweet and placid smile. “Three times I have told you things that were to go no further, and all three of them went twenty miles within three days. I do not complain of it; far less of you. You may have felt it quite as much your duty to spread knowledge as I felt it mine to restrict it. And I never should have let you get all this out of me now, if it had been at all incumbent upon me to keep it quiet.”
“That means that I have never got it out of you at all. I have taken all this trouble for nothing.”
“No, my dear, not at all. You have worked well, and have promised not to say a word about it. You might not have known it for a week at least, except for my confidence in you.”
“Much of it I thank you for. But don't be cross, my dear, because you have behaved so atrociously. You have not answered half of my questions yet.”
“Well, there were so many, that I scarcely can remember them. Let me see: I have told you who the great man is, and the reason that brought him to Flamborough. Then about the dangerous chill he has taken; it came through a bitter ride from Scarborough; and if Dr. Stirbacks came, he would probably make it still more dangerous. At least so Mordacks says; and the patient is in his hands, and out of mine; so that Stirbacks can not be aggrieved with us. On the other hand, as to the milkman from Sewerby. I really do not know why he shook his head. Perhaps he found the big pump frozen. He is not of my parish, and may shake his head without asking my permission. Now I think that I have answered nearly all your questions.”
“Not at all; I have not had time to ask them yet, because I feel so much above them. But if the milkman meant nothing, because of his not belonging to our parish, the butcher does, and he can have no excuse. He says that Mr. Mordacks takes all the best meanings of a mutton-sheep every other day to Burlington.”
“I know he does. And it ought to put us to the blush that a stranger should have to do so. Mordacks is finding clothes, food, and firing for all the little creatures poor Carroway left, and even for his widow, who has got a wandering mind. Without him there would not have been one left. The poor mother locked in all her little ones, and starved them, to save them from some quite imaginary foe. The neighbors began to think of interfering, and might have begun to do it when it was all over. Happily, Mordacks arrived just in time. His promptitude, skill, and generosity saved them. Never say a word against that man again.”
“My dear, I will not,” Mrs. Upround answered, with tears coming into her kindly eyes. “I never heard of anything more pitiful. I had no idea Mr. Mordacks was so good. He looks more like an evil spirit. I always regarded him as an evil spirit; and his name sounds like it, and he jumps about so. But he ought to have gone to the rector of the parish.”
“It is a happy thing that he can jump about. The rector of the parish can not do so, as you know; and he lives two miles away from them, and had never even heard of it. People always talk about the rector of a parish as if he could be everywhere and see to everything. And few of them come near him in their prosperous times. Have you any other questions to put to me, my dear?”