Deerbrook Part 72

"That is just what Hester is observing within here. You are almost ready for breakfast, are you not? She is setting the table."

"Quite ready. What warm work this is! Really I do not believe there is such a bit of pavement in all Deerbrook as this of ours."

"Come--come in to breakfast. You have admired your work quite enough for this morning."

The three who sat down to breakfast were as reasonable and philosophical as most people; but even they were taken by surprise with the sweetness of comforts provided by their own immediate toil. There was something in the novelty, perhaps; but Hope threw on the fire with remarkable energy the coals he had himself brought in from the coal-house, and ate with great relish the toast toasted by his wife's own hands. Margaret, too, looked round the room more than once, with a new sort of pride in there being not a particle of dust on table, chair, or book. It was scarcely possible to persuade Edward that there was nothing more for him to do about the house till the next morning; that the errand-boy would come in an hour, and clean the shoes; and that the only a.s.sistance the master of the house could render, would be to take charge of the baby for a quarter of an hour, while Hester helped her sister to make the beds.

After breakfast, when Hester was dressing her infant, and Margaret was.h.i.+ng up the tea-cups and saucers, the postman's knock was heard.

Margaret went to the door, and paid for the letter from the "emergency purse," as they called the little sum of money they had put aside for unforeseen expenses. The letter was for Edward, and so brief that it must be on business.

It was on business. It was from the lawyer of Mr Hope's aged grandfather; and it told that the old gentleman had at last sunk rather suddenly under his many infirmities. Mr Hope was invited to go--not to the funeral, for it must be over before he could arrive, but to see the will, in which he had a large beneficial interest, the property being divided between himself and his brother, subject to legacies of one hundred pounds to each of his sisters, and a few smaller bequests to the servants.

"This is as you always feared," said Hester to her husband, observing the expression of concern in his face, on reading the letter.

"Indeed, I always feared it would be so," he replied. "I did what I could to prevent this act of posthumous injustice; and I am grieved that I failed; for nothing can repair it. My sisters will have their money-- the same in amount, but how different in value! They will receive it as a gift from their brothers, instead of as their due from their grandfather. I am very sorry his last act was of this character."

"Will you go? Must you go?"

"No, I shall not go--at least, not at present. The funeral would be over, you see, before I could get there; and I doubt not the rest of the business may be managed quietly and easily by letter. I have no inclination to travel just now, and no money to do it with, and strong reasons of another kind for staying at home. No, I shall not go."

"I am very glad. Now, the first duty is to write to Emily and Anne, I suppose: and to Frank?"

"Not to Frank just yet. He knows what I meant to do, in case of my grandfather recurring to this disposition of his property; and, further than this, I must not influence Frank. He must be left entirely free to do as he thinks proper, and I shall not communicate with him till he has had ample time to decide on his course. I shall write to Emily and Anne to-day."

"I am sorry for them."

"So am I. What a pity it is, when the aged, whom one would wish to honour after they are gone to their graves, impair one's respect, by an unjust arrangement of their affairs! How easily might my grandfather have satisfied us all, and secured our due reverence at the last, by merely being just! Now, after admitting what was just, he has gone back into his prejudices, and placed us all in a painful position, from which it will be difficult to every one of us to regard his memory as we should wish."

"He little thought you would look upon his rich legacy in this way,"

said Margaret, smiling.

"I gave him warning that I should. It was impossible to refuse it more peremptorily than I did."

"That must be your satisfaction now, love. You have done everything that was right; so we will not discompose ourselves because another has done a wrong which you can partly repair."

"My dear wife, what comfort you give! What a blessing it is, that you think, and feel, and will act, with me--making my duty easy instead of difficult!"

"I was going to ask," observed Margaret, "whether you have no misgiving--no doubt whatever that you are right in refusing all this money."

"Not the slightest doubt, Margaret. The case is not in any degree altered by my change of fortune. The facts remain, that my sisters have received nothing yet from the property, while I have had my professional education out of it. That my profession does not at present supply us with bread does not affect the question at all: nor can you think that it does, I am sure. But Hester, my love, what think you of our prospect of a hundred pounds?"

"A hundred pounds!"

"Yes; that is the sum set down for me when the honest will was made; and that sum I shall of course retain."

"Oh, delightful! What a quant.i.ty of comfort we may get out of a hundred pounds! How rich we shall be!"

"She is thinking already," said Margaret, "what sort of a pretty cloak baby is to have for the summer."

"And Margaret must have something out of it, must not she, love?" asked Hester.

"We will all enjoy it, with many thanks to my poor grandfather. Surely this hundred pounds will set us on through the year."

"That will be very pleasant, really," observed Margaret. "To be sure of bread for all the rest of the year! Oh, the value of a hundred pounds to some people!"

"What a pity that Morris did not stay this one other day!" exclaimed Hester. "And yet, perhaps, not so. It might have perplexed her mind about leaving us, and induced her to give up her new place; and there is nothing in a chance hundred pounds to justify that. It is better as it is."

"All things are very well as they are," said Hope, "as long as we think so. Now, I am going to call on Walcot. Good-bye."

"Stop, stop one moment! Stay, and see what I have found!" cried his wife, in a tone of glee. "Look! Feel! Tell me--is not this our boy's first tooth?"

"It is--it certainly is. I give you joy, my little fellow!"

"Worth all the hundreds of pounds in the world," observed Margaret, coming in her turn to see and feel the little pearly edge, whose value its owner was far from appreciating, while worried with the inquisition which was made into the mysteries of his mouth. "Now it _is_ a pity that Morris is not here!" all exclaimed.

"We must write to her. Perhaps we might have found it yesterday, if we had had any idea it would come so soon."

No: Hester was quite positive there was no tooth to be seen or felt last night.

"Well, we must write to Morris."

"You must leave me a corner," said Hope. "We must all try our skill in describing a first tooth. I will consider my part as I walk. Bite my finger once more before I go, my boy."

The sisters busied themselves in putting the parlour in order, for the reception of any visitors who might chance to call, though the streets were so deep in snow as to render the chance a remote one. Margaret believed that, when the time should come, she might set the potatoes over the parlour fire to boil, and thus, without detection, save the lighting another fire. But before she had taken off her ap.r.o.n, while she was in the act of sweeping up the hearth, there was a loud knock, which she recognised as proceeding from the hand of a Grey. The family resemblance extended to their knocks at the door.

As if no snow had fallen, Mrs Grey and Sophia entered.

"You are surprised to see us, my dears, I have no doubt. But I could not be satisfied without knowing what Mr Hope thinks of this epidemic, this terrible fever, which every one is speaking about so frightfully."

"Why, what can he think?"

"I mean, my dear, does he suppose that it will come here? Are we likely to have it?"

"He tells us, what I suppose you hear from Mr Grey, that the fever seems to be spreading everywhere, and is just now very destructive at Buckley. Does not Mr Grey tell you so?"

"No, indeed; there is no learning anything from Mr Grey that he does not like to tell. Sophia, I think we must take in a newspaper again, that we may stand a chance of knowing something."

Sophia agreed.

"Sophia and I found that we really had no time to read the newspaper.

There it lay, and n.o.body touched it; for Mr Grey reads the news in the office always. I told Mr Grey it was just paying so much a-week for no good to anybody, and I begged he would countermand the paper. But we must take it in again, really, to know how this fever goes on. Does Mr Hope think, my dears, as many people are saying here this morning, that it is a sort of plague?"

"Oh, mamma," exclaimed Sophia, "how can you say anything so dreadful?"

"I have not heard my husband speak of it so," said Hester. "He thinks it a very serious affair, happening as it does in the midst of a scarcity, when the poor are already depressed and sickly."

"Ah! that is always the way, Mr Grey tells me. After a scarcity comes the fever, he says. The poor are much to be pitied indeed. But what should those do who are not poor, have you heard Mr Hope say?"