“After all, the weary waiting time is all behind you,” said Mr. Somerset. “Only fancy if last year you could have felt as you may now, that all which remains is but a few days more or less.”
“We’ll have to be quite sure that we recognise Mr. Challoner when he appears,” put in Miss Latimer playfully, pointing to Charlie’s portrait over the fireplace. “Remember he has had long voyagings through sunny seas even since that was taken, and his present self may be as much of an improvement on that as that is on the pale invalid who went away.”
“You have made a supreme effort to win this triumph, Mrs. Challoner,” remarked Mr. Somerset. “It may all seem easy to you now it is ending so beautifully. But you made the effort in the dark, not knowing how it might end.”
“But it was right to do, and that was Lucy’s part, and the disposing of it is God’s,” said Miss Latimer. “We must not do evil that good may come. But we must do right, however its ending may seem to us.”
“But possibly right is somewhat different with different people,” remarked Mr. Somerset. “What was right for our friend here to do was an action right only in those as brave and capable as she is.”
“I am no casuist,” returned Miss Latimer. “My idea of right is that it is what each person knows he or she ought to do and can do.”
“Ah, but there is a great deal in that ‘can do,’” smiled Mr. Somerset.
“None know what they can do till they try,” retorted Miss Latimer.
“Dr. Ivery has been so kind,” said Lucy. “He had sent two or three times to inquire after Charlie’s progress. So when I got that photograph I thought I ought to let him see it. I said I hoped he would excuse me for bringing it, but I thought it might help him what to advise in similar cases, and he said, ‘Yes.’” Lucy broke off abruptly with a little laugh and a heightened colour.
Mr. Somerset and Miss Latimer also laughed. They both guessed what Lucy did not choose to tell them, that the doctor had said he would often be happy to prescribe such a cure if the patient were but provided with such a wife to help him to carry it out!