Heriot's Choice: A Tale

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'I hope you told him so.'

'Yes, I was very good to him when I saw my sarcasms hurt. I gave him tea with my own fair hands, and was very plentiful in the matter of cream, which I know to be his weakness; and I made Minto pet him and Lassie jump up on his knee, and by and by my good temper was rewarded, and "Richard was himself again!"'

'Did he tell you he is going to Oxford after Christmas?'

'Yes; I am thankful to hear it. What is the good of his rusting here, when every one says he has such wonderful abilities? I hope you do not think me wrong, Mildred,' blushing slightly, 'but I strongly advocated his reading for the Bar.'

Mildred sighed.

'There is no doubt he wishes it above all things; he quite warmed into eagerness as we discussed it. My father has always said that his clear logical head and undoubted talents would be invaluable as a barrister. He has no want of earnestness, but he somehow lacks the persuasive eloquence that ought to be innate in the real priest; and yet when I said as much he shook his head, and relapsed into sadness again, said there was more than that, hinted at a rooted antipathy, then turned it off by owning that he disliked the notion of talking to old women about their souls; was sure he would be a cypher at a sickbed, good for nothing but scolding the people all round, and thought writing a couple of sermons a week the most wearisome work in the world—digging into one's brains for dry matter that must not be embellished even by a few harmless Latin and Greek quotations.'

Mildred looked grave. 'I fear he dislikes the whole thing.'

But Ethel interposed eagerly. 'You must not blame him if he be unfit by temperament. He had far better be a rising barrister than a half-hearted priest.'

'I would sooner see him anything than that—a navvy rather.'

'That is what I say,' continued Miss Trelawny, triumphant; 'and yet when I hinted as much he threw up his head with quite a Cœur-de-Lion look, and said, "Yes, I know, but you must not tempt me to break through my father's wishes. If it can be done without sacrilege——" And then he stopped, and asked if it were only the Westmorland old women were so trying. I do call it very wrong, Mildred, that any bias should have been put on his wishes in this respect, especially as in two more years Richard knows he will be independent of his father.' And as Mildred looked astonished at this piece of information, Ethel modestly returned that she had been intimate so many years at the vicarage—at least with the vicar and his wife and Richard—that many things came to her knowledge. Both she and her father knew that part of the mother's money had, with the vicar's consent, been settled on her boy, and Mildred, who knew that a considerable sum had a few years before been left to Betha by an eccentric uncle whom Mr. Lambert had inadvertently offended, and that he had willed it exclusively for the use of his niece and her children, was nevertheless surprised to hear that while a moderate portion had been reserved to her girls, Roy's share was only small, while Richard at one-and-twenty would be put in possession of more than three hundred a year.