ON MICHAEL'S BENCH
| 'What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who has brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them out the outside of the wall, For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largesse?' Mrs. Browning. |
Dr. Ross and his wife listened very kindly to their daughter's project. Indeed, if Audrey had expressed a wish to establish a small colony of street Arabs at the end of the Woodcote garden, Mrs. Ross would have offered no objection to the scheme. Audrey could have ruled her mother as well as ever Geraldine had ruled her; but she was too generous to exert her influence. Her mother could have refused her nothing; from morning to night her one thought was how she might console her child.
'Mollie will be such a companion for Audrey, John!' she suggested, when for one moment her husband had hesitated.
'I was thinking about Matthew O'Brien,' he replied. 'Brail is rather too near, and people will talk; it will leak out in time that O'Brien is Mollie's father.'
'Will that matter?' interposed Michael; 'talk will not hurt anyone. I think I can answer for O'Brien: he is the last man to lay claim to his own child. His brother tells me that he is perfectly content if he sees her from time to time. Kester often writes to him, and he is never tired of reading his letters. Both Mollie and Kester have grown quite fond of him.'
'I think it should be kept quiet, for Mollie's sake,' returned Dr. Ross. 'In my judgment, Matthew O'Brien is a very unfit person to take care of a girl approaching womanhood. His brother is old, and he may outlive him. I do not wish to be hard on him, but he seems to me a very irresponsible sort of person. When Mollie is of age she will, of course, judge for herself; but until then her friends will be wise not to give her up to her father's guardianship.'
'He will never claim her,' replied Michael dryly. 'I will quote your own words: an irresponsible person is only too glad to evade responsibility. Mollie may live at Woodcote quite safely, and her visits to Brail will be taken as a matter of course. Of all people I know, the O'Briens are the least likely to chatter about their private concerns. Matthew O'Brien will be too thankful that his daughter should enjoy such privileges to wish to rob her of them.'
'Father, it will make me so happy to have her!' whispered Audrey in her father's ear.
Then the Doctor's eyes glistened with tenderness.