“So it is, but I’ll give up the whole thousand if you’ll take me down into the mine. Papa, I ask you every time we come to see Uncle Seldon, but you never do.”
Dr. Norton looked uncomfortable, glanced at his uncle, who seemed to avoid his eye, and then at his aunt, who, on the contrary, fixed her eyes on his very expressively and sadly, while her lips parted as if she were about to say something. Mrs. Norton kept her attention steadily fixed upon her plate, but the color rushed to her face, and she, too, looked ill at ease.
“Well, what have I said?” said Marion, who was something of a spoiled child. “One would think I had done something out of the way. You all look as displeased as Miss Hiller does when I wipe my pen on my pocket-handkerchief or get a blot on the copy-book.”
“If such are your habits, I don’t wonder your mamma has had to change your governesses so often,” said the rector, seizing the opportunity to change the subject and keep the conversation in his own hands for a few moments.
But Marion might have found an opportunity to repeat her question, had it not been for an occurrence which gave them something else to think of. Peter, the privileged old butler, whose own mother had been the rector’s nurse, and who consequently felt himself to be one of the family, came running into the room without the toast he had been sent for, and, without waiting to be questioned as to his singular behavior, exclaimed, lapsing into the speech of his earlier years:
“Maister! maister! There’s been a falling-in at the mines, and Joe Short he have been up to say there’s been men buried under, an’ the superintendent’s down with ’em, and there’s no one about giving any orders worth taking, an’ he says the skreeling of the women is fit to turn the head of one!”
“There must have been some carelessness with uncovered lamps,” said the rector, rising instantly. “Bring my coat, Peter, and get ready to come with me.”
“I am going with you, too,” said Dr. Norton.
“And I will follow as soon as I can prepare some bandages in case they should be wanted,” said Mrs. Norton, “and some brandy, if Aunt Delia will give it to me.”
“How very thoughtful you are, Grace!” the rector stopped a moment to say. “If you are willing to come over, you might, perhaps, comfort the poor women who will be waiting in agony to know if their husbands and sons are living or dead. But can you bear it, dear?”