Sir Arthur came quickly to the rescue, as he said, “He’s going to take up an appointment under the Crown; and, like a good and prudent lad, to earn his bread, and do something towards his mother’s comfort.”
“I think you never take sugar,” said she, smiling faintly; “and for a while you made a convert of Alice.”
Was there ever a more common-place remark? and yet it sent the blood to poor Tony’s face and temples, and overwhelmed him with confusion. “You know that the girls are both away?”
“It’s a capital thing they ‘ve given him,” said Sir Arthur, trying to extract from his wife even the semblance of an interest in the young fellow’s career.
“What is it?” asked she.
“How do they call you? Are you a Queen’s messenger, or a Queen’s courier, or a Foreign Office messenger?”
“I’m not quite sure. I believe we are messengers, but whose I don’t remember.”
“They have the charge of all the despatches to the various embassies and legations in every part of the world,” said Sir Arthur, pompously.
“How addling it must be, – how confusing!”
“Why so? You don’t imagine that they have to retain them, and report them orally, do you?”
“Well, I ‘m afraid I did,” said she, with a little simper that seemed to say, What did it signify either way?
“They’d have made a most unlucky selection in my case,” said Tony, laughing, “if such had been the duty.”
“Do you think you shall like it?”
“I suppose I shall. There is so very little I ‘m really fit for, that I look on this appointment as a piece of rare luck.”
“I fancy I ‘d rather have gone into the army, – a cavalry regiment, for instance.”
“The most wasteful and extravagant career a young fellow could select,” said Sir Arthur, smarting under some recent and not over-pleasant experiences.
“The uniform is so becoming too,” said she, languidly.
“It is far and away beyond any pretension of my humble fortune, Madam,” said Tony, proudly, for there was an impertinent carelessness in her manner that stung him to the quick.
“Ah, yes,” sighed she; “and the army, too, is not the profession for one who wants to marry.”
Tony again felt his cheek on fire, but he did not utter a word as she went on, “And report says something like this of you, Mr. Butler.”
“What, Tony! how is this? I never heard of it before,” cried Sir Arthur.
“Nor I, sir.”
“Come, come. It is very indiscreet of me, I know,” said Lady Lyle; “but as we are in such a secret committee here at this moment, I fancied I might venture to offer my congratulations.”
“Congratulations! on what would be the lad’s ruin! Why, it would be downright insanity. I trust there is not a word of truth in it.”
“I repeat, sir, that I hear it all for the first time.”
“I conclude, then, I must have been misinformed.”
“Might I be bold enough to ask from what quarter the rumor reached you, or with whom they mated me?”
“Oh, as to your choice, I hear she is a very nice girl indeed, admirably brought up and well educated, – everything but rich; but of course that fact was well known to you. Men in her father’s position are seldom affluent.”
“And who could possibly have taken the trouble to weave all this romance about me?” said Tony, flushing not the less deeply that he suspected it was Dolly Stewart who was indicated by the description.
“One of the girls, I forget which, told me. Where she learned it, I forget, if I ever knew; but I remember that the story had a sort of completeness about it that looked like truth.” Was it accident or intention that made Lady Lyle fix her eyes steadily on Tony as she spoke? As she did so, his color, at first crimson, gave way to an ashy paleness, and he seemed like one about to faint. “After all,” said she, “perhaps it was a mere flirtation that people magnified into marriage.”
“It was not even that,” gasped he out, hoarsely. “I am overstaying my time, and my mother will be waiting tea for me,” muttered he; and with some scarcely intelligible attempts at begging to be remembered to Alice and Bella, he took his leave, and hurried away.
While Tony, with a heart almost bursting with agony, wended his way towards home, Lady Lyle resumed her novel, and Sir Arthur took up the “Times.” After about half an hour’s reading he laid down the paper, and said, “I hope there is no truth in that story about young Butler.”
“Not a word of it,” said she, dryly.
“Not a word of it! but I thought you believed it.”
“Nothing of the kind. It was a lesson the young gentleman has long needed, and I was only waiting for a good opportunity to give it.”
“I don’t understand you. What do you mean by a lesson?”
“I have very long suspected that it was a great piece of imprudence on our part to encourage the intimacy of this young man here, and to give him that position of familiarity which he obtained amongst us; but I trusted implicitly to the immeasurable distance that separated him from our girls, to secure us against danger. That clever man of the world, Mr. Maitland, however, showed me I was wrong. He was not a week here till he saw enough to induce him to give me a warning; and though at first he thought it was Bella’s favor he aspired to, he afterwards perceived it was to Alice he directed his attentions.”
“I can’t believe this possible. Tony would never dare such a piece of presumption.”
“You forget two things, Sir Arthur. This young fellow fancies that his good birth makes him the equal of any one; and, secondly, Alice, in her sense of independence, is exactly the girl to do a folly, and imagine it to be heroic; so Maitland himself said to me, and it was perfectly miraculous how well he read her whole nature. And indeed it was he who suggested to me to charge Tony Butler with being engaged to the minister’s daughter, and told me – and as I saw, with truth – how thoroughly it would test his suspicions about him. I thought he was going to faint, – he really swayed back and forwards when I said that it was one of the girls from whom I had the story.”
“If I could only believe this, he should never cross the threshold again. Such insolence is, however, incredible.”
“That’s a man’s way of regarding it; and however you sneer at our credulity, it enables us to see scores of things that your obstinacy is blind to. I am sincerely glad he is going away.”
“So am I – now; and I trust, in my heart, we have seen the last of him.”
“How tired you look, my poor Tony!” said his mother, as he entered the cottage and threw himself heavily and wearily into a chair.
“I am tired, mother, – very tired and jaded.”
“I wondered what kept you so long, Tony; for I had time to pack your trunk, and to put away all your things; and when it was done and finished, to sit down and sorrow over your going away. Oh, Tony dear, are n’t we ungrateful creatures, when we rise up in rebellion against the very mercies that are vouchsafed us, and say, Why was my prayer granted me? I am sure it was many and many a night, as I knelt down, I begged the Lord would send you some calling or other, that you might find means of an honest living; and a line of life that would n’t disgrace the stock you came from; and now that He has graciously heard me, here I am repining and complaining just as if it was n’t my own supplication that was listened to.”
Perhaps Tony was not in a humor to discuss a nice question of ethical meaning, for he abruptly said, “Sir Arthur Lyle read your note over, and said he’d call one of these days and see you. I suppose he meant with the answer.”
“There was no answer, Tony; the matter was just this, – I wanted a trifle of an advance from the bank, just to give you a little money when you have to go away; and Tom M’Elwain, the new manager, not knowing me perhaps, referred the matter to Sir Arthur, which was not what I wished or intended, and so I wrote and said so. Perhaps I said so a little too curtly, as if I was too proud, or the like, to accept a favor at Sir Arthur’s hands; for he wrote me a very beautiful letter – it went home to my heart – about his knowing your father long ago, when they were both lads, and had the wide world before them; and alluding very touchingly to the Lord’s bounties to himself, – blessing him with a full garner.”
“I hope you accepted nothing from him,” broke in Tony, roughly.
“No, Tony; for it happened that James Hewson, the apothecary, had a hundred pounds that he wanted to lay out on a safe mortgage, and so I took it, at six per cent, and gave him over the deeds of the little place here.”
“For a hundred pounds! Why, it ‘s worth twelve hundred at least, mother!”
“What a boy it is!” said she, laughing. “I merely gave him his right to claim the one hundred that he advanced, Tony dear; and my note to Sir Arthur was to ask him to have the bond, or whatever it is called, rightly drawn up and witnessed, and at the same time to thank him heartily for his own kind readiness to serve me.”
“I hate a mortgage, mother. I don’t feel as if the place was our own any longer.”
“Your father’s own words, eighteen years ago, when he drew all the money he had out of the agent’s hands, and paid off the debt on this little spot here. ‘Nelly,’ said he, ‘I can look out of the window now, and not be afraid of seeing a man coming ap the road to ask for his interest.’”
“It’s the very first thing I ‘ll try to do, is to pay off that debt, mother. Who knows but I may be able before the year is over! But I am glad you did n’t take it from Sir Arthur.”
“You’re as proud as your father, Tony,” said she, with her eyes full of tears; “take care that you’re as good as he was too.”
CHAPTER XXXVI. A CORNER IN DOWNING STREET
When Tony Butler found himself inside of the swinging glass-door at Downing Street, and in presence of the august Mr. Willis, the porter, it seemed as if all the interval since he had last stood in the same place had been a dream. The head-porter looked up from his “Times,” and with a severity that showed he had neither forgotten nor forgiven, said, “Messengers’ room – first pair – corridor – third door on the left.” There was an unmistakable dignity in the manner of the speaker which served to show Tony not merely that his former offence remained unpardoned, but that his entrance into public life had not awed or impressed in any way the stern official.
Tony passed on, mounted the stairs, and sauntered along a very ill-kept corridor, not fully certain whether it was the third, fourth, or fifth door he was in search of, or on what hand. After about half an hour passed in the hope of seeing one to direct him, he made bold to knock gently at a door. To his repeated summons no answer was returned, and he tried another, when a shrill voice cried, “Come in.” He entered, and saw a slight, sickly-looking youth, very elaborately dressed, seated at a table, writing. The room was a large one, very dirty, ill-furnished, and disorderly.
“Well, what is it?” asked the young gentleman, without lifting his head or his eyes from the desk.
“Could you tell me,” said Tony, courteously, “where I ought to go? I ‘m Butler, an extra messenger, and I have been summoned to attend and report here this morning.”
“All right; we want you,” said the other, still writing; “wait an instant.” So saying, he wrote on for several minutes at a rapid pace, muttering the words as his pen traced them; at last he finished, and, descending from his high seat, passed across the room, opened a door, which led into another room, and called out, —
“The messenger come, sir!”
“Who is he?” shouted a very harsh voice.
“First for Madrid, sir,” said the youth, examining a slip of paper he had just taken from his pocket.
“His name?” shouted out the other again.
“Poynder, sir.”
“I beg your pardon,” suggested Tony, mildly. “I’m Butler, not Poynder.”
“Who’s talking out there, – what’s that uproar?” screamed the voice, very angrily.
“He says he ‘s not for Madrid, sir. It’s a mistake,” cried the youth.
“No; you misunderstand me,” whispered Tony. “I only said I was not Poynder.”
“He says he ‘s in Poynder’s place.”
“I’ll stop this system of substitutes!” cried the voice. “Send him in here.”
“Go in there,” said the youth, with a gesture of his thumb, and his face at the same time wore an expression which said as plain as any words could have spoken, “And you ‘ll see how you like it.”
As Tony entered, he found himself standing face to face to the awful official, Mr. Brand, the same who had reported to the Minister his intended assault upon Willis, the porter. “Aw! what’s all this about?” said Mr. Brand, pompously. “You are Mr. – Mr. – ”
“Mr. Butler,” said Tony, quietly, but with an air of determination.
“And instead of reporting yourself, you come here to say that you have exchanged with Poynder.”
“I never heard of Poynder till three minutes ago.”
“You want, however, to take his journey, sir. You call yourself first for Madrid?”
“I do nothing of the kind. I have come here because I got a telegram two days ago. I know nothing of Poynder, and just as little about Madrid.”
“Oh – aw! you’re Butler! I remember all about you now; there is such a swarm of extras appointed, that it’s impossible to remember names or faces. You ‘re the young gentleman who – who – yes, yes, I remember it all; but have you passed the civil-service examiners?”
“No; I was preparing for the examination when I received that message, and came off ‘at once.”
“Well, you ‘ll present yourself at Burlington House. Mr. Blount will make out the order for you; you can go up the latter end of this week, and we shall want you immediately.”
“But I am not ready. I was reading for this examination when your telegram came, and I set off at the instant.”
“Blount, Mr. Blount!” screamed out the other, angrily; and as the affrighted youth presented himself, all pale and trembling, he went on: “What’s the meaning of this, sir? You first attempt to pass this person off for Poynder: and when that scheme fails, you endeavor to slip him into the service without warrant or qualification. He tells me himself he knows nothing.”
“Very little, certainly, but I don’t remember telling you so,” said Tony.
“And do you imagine, sir, that a bravado about your ignorance is the sure road to advancement? I can tell you, young gentleman, that the days of mighty patronage are gone by; the public require to be served with competent officials. We are not in the era of Castlereaghs and Vansittarts. If you can satisfy the Commissioners, you may come back here; if you cannot, you may go back to – to whatever life you were leading before, and were probably most fit for. As for you, Mr. Blount, I told you before that on the first occasion of your attempting to exercise here that talent for intrigue on which you pride yourself, and of which Mr. Vance told me you were a proficient, I should report you. I now say, sir, – and bear in mind I say so openly, and to yourself, and in presence of your friend here, – I shall do so this day.”
“May I explain, sir?”
“You may not, sir, – withdraw!” The wave of the hand that accompanied this order evidently included Tony; but he held his ground undismayed, while the other fell back, overwhelmed with shame and confusion.
Not deigning to be aware of Tony’s continued presence in the room, Mr. Brand again addressed himself to his writing materials, when a green-cloth door at the back of the room opened, and Mr. Vance entered, and, advancing to where the other sat, leaned over his chair and whispered some words in his ear. “You ‘ll find I ‘m right,” muttered he, as he finished.
“And where’s the Office to go to?” burst out the other, in a tone of ill-repressed passion; “will you just tell me that? Where’s the Office to go – if this continues?”
“That’s neither your affair nor mine,” whispered Vance. “These sort of things were done before we were born, and they will be done after we ‘re in our graves!”
“And is he to walk in here, and say, ‘I ‘m first for service; I don’t care whether you like it or not’?”
“He ‘s listening to you all this while, – are you aware of that?” whispered Vance; on which the other grew very red in the face, took off his spectacles, wiped and replaced them, and then, addressing Tony, said, “Go away, sir, – leave the Office.”
“Mr. Brand means that you need not wait,” said Vance, approaching Tony. “All you have to do is to leave your town address here, in the outer office, and come up once or twice a day.”
“And as to this examination,” said Tony, stoutly, “it’s better I should say once for all – ”
“It’s better you should just say nothing at all,” said the other, good-humoredly, as he slipped his arm inside of Tony’s and led him away. “You see,” whispered he, “my friend Mr. Brand is hasty.”
“I should think he is hasty!” growled out Tony.
“But he is a warm-hearted – a truly warm-hearted man – ”
“Warm enough he seems.”
“When you know him better – ”
“I don’t want to know him better!” burst in Tony. “I got into a scrape already with just such another: he was collector for the port of Derry, and I threw him out of the window, and all the blame was laid upon me!”
“Well, that certainly was hard,” said Vance, with a droll twinkle of his eye, – “I call that very hard.”
“So do I, after the language he used to me, saying all the while, ‘I’m no duellist, – I’m not for a saw-pit, with coffee and pistols for two,’ – and all that vulgar slang about murder and such-like.”
“And was he much hurt?”
“No; not much. It was only his collar-bone and one rib, I think, – I forget now, – for I had to go over to Skye, and stay there a good part of the summer.”
“Mr. Blount, take down this gentleman’s address, and show him where he is to wait; and don’t – ” Here he lowered his voice, so that the remainder of his speech was inaudible to Tony.
“Not if I can help it, sir,” replied Blount; “but if you knew how hard it is!”
There was something almost piteous in the youth’s face as he spoke; and, indeed, Vance seemed moved to a certain degree of compassion as he said, “Well, well, do your best, – do your best, none can do more.”
“It’s two o’clock. I ‘ll go out and have a cigar with you, if you don’t mind,” said Blount to Tony. “We ‘re quite close to the Park here; and a little fresh air will do me good.”
“Come along,” said Tony, who, out of compassion, had already a sort of half-liking for the much-suffering young fellow.
“I wish Skeffy was here,” said Tony, as they went downstairs.
“Do you know Skeff Darner, then?”
“Know him! I believe he ‘s about the fellow I like best in the world.”
“So do I,” cried the other, warmly; “he hasn’t his equal living; he ‘s the best-hearted and he’s the cleverest fellow I ever met.”
And now they both set to, as really only young friends ever do, to extol a loved one with that heartiness that neither knows limit nor measure. What a good fellow he was, – how much of this, without the least of that, – how unspoiled, too, in the midst of the flattery he met with! “If you just saw him as I did a few days back,” said Tony, calling up in memory Skeffy’s hearty enjoyment of their humble cottage-life.
“If you but knew how they think of him in the Office,” said Blount, whose voice actually trembled as he touched on the holy of holies.
“Confound the Office!” cried Tony. “Yes; don’t look shocked. I hate that dreary old house, and I detest the grim old fellows inside of it.”
“They ‘re severe, certainly,” muttered the other, in a deprecatory tone.
“Severe isn’t the name for it. They insult – they outrage – that’s what they do. I take it that you and the other young fellows here are gentlemen, and I ask, Why do you bear it, – why do you put up with it? Perhaps you like it, however.”
“No; we don’t like it,” said he, with an honest simplicity.
“Then, I ask again, why do you stand it?”
“I believe we stand it just because we can’t help it.”
“Can’t help it!”
“What could we do? What would you do?” asked Blount
“I ‘d go straight at the first man that insulted me, and say, Retract that, or I ‘ll pitch you over the banisters.”
“That’s all very fine with you fellows who have great connections and powerful relatives ready to stand by you and pull you out of any scrape, and then, if the worst comes, have means enough to live without work. That will do very well for you and Skeffy. Skeffy will have six thousand a year one of these days. No one can keep him out of Digby Darner’s estate; and you, for aught I know, may have more.”
“I have n’t sixpence, nor the expectation of sixpence in the world. If I am plucked at this examination I may go and enlist, or turn navvy, or go and sweep away the dead leaves like that fellow yonder.”
“Then take my advice, and don’t go up.”
“Go up where?”
“Don’t go up to be examined; just wait here in town; don’t show too often at the office, but come up of a morning about twelve, – I ‘m generally down here by that time. There will be a great press for messengers soon, for they have made a regulation about one going only so far, and another taking up his bag and handing it on to a third; and the consequence is, there are three now stuck fast at Marseilles, and two at Belgrade, and all the Constantinople despatches have gone round by the Cape. Of course, as I say, they ‘ll have to alter this, and then we shall suddenly want every fellow we can lay hands on; so all you have to do is just to be ready, and I ‘ll take care to start you at the first chance.”
“You ‘re a good fellow,” cried Tony, grasping his hand; “if you only knew what a bad swimmer it was you picked out of the water.”
“Oh, I can do that much, at least,” said he, modestly, “though I’m not a clever fellow like Skeffy; but I must go back, or I shall ‘catch it.’ Look in the day after to-morrow.”
“And let us dine together; that is, you will dine with me,” said Tony. The other acceded freely, and they parted.
That magnetism by which young fellows are drawn instantaneously towards each other, and feel something that, if not friendship, is closely akin to it, never repeats itself in after life. We grow more cautious about our contracts as we grow older. I wonder do we make better bargains?
If Tony was then somewhat discouraged by his reception at the Office, he had the pleasure of thinking he was compensated in that new-found friend who was so fond of Skeffy, and who could talk away as enthusiastically about him as himself. “Now for M’Gruder and Cannon Row, wherever that may be,” said he, as he sauntered along; “I ‘ll certainly go and see him, if only to shake hands with a fellow that showed such ‘good blood.’” There was no one quality which Tony could prize higher than this. The man who could take a thrashing in good part, and forgive him who gave it, must be a fine fellow, he thought; and I ‘m not disposed to say he was wrong.
The address was 27 Cannon Street, City; and it was a long way off, and the day somewhat spent when he reached it.
“Mr. M’Gruder?” asked Tony of a blear-eyed man, at a small faded desk in a narrow office.
“Inside!” said he, with a jerk of his thumb; and Tony pushed his way into a small room, so crammed with reams of paper that there was barely space to squeeze a passage to a little writing-table next the window.
“Well, sir, your pleasure?” said M’Gruder, as Tony came forward.
“You forget me, I see; my name is Butler.”
“Eh! what! I ought not to forget you,” said he, rising, and grasping the other’s hand warmly; “how are you? when did you come up to town? You see the eye is all right; it was a bit swollen for more than a fortnight, though. Hech, sirs! but you have hard knuckles of your own.”
It was not easy to apologize for the rough treatment he had inflicted, and Tony blundered and stammered in his attempts to do so; but M’Gruder laughed it all off with perfect good-humor, and said, “My wife will forgive you, too, one of these days, but not just yet; and so we’ll go and have a bit o’ dinner our two selves down the river. Are you free to-day?”
Tony was quite free and ready to go anywhere; and so away they went, at first by river steamer, and then by a cab, and then across some low-lying fields to a small solitary house close to the Thames, – “Shads, chops, and fried-fish house,” over the door, and a pleasant odor of each around the premises.
“Ain’t we snug here? no tracking a man this far,” said M’Grader, as he squeezed into a bench behind a fixed table in a very small room. “I never heard of the woman that ran her husband to earth down here.”
That this same sense of security had a certain value in M’Grader’s estimation was evident, for he more than once recurred to the sentiment as they sat at dinner.
The tavern was a rare place for “hollands,” as M’Grader said; and they sat over a peculiar brew for which the house was famed, but of which Tony’s next day’s experiences do not encourage me to give the receipt to my readers. The cigars, too, albeit innocent of duty, might have been better; but all these, like some other pleasures we know of, only were associated with sorrow in the future. Indeed, in the cordial freedom that bound them they thought very little of either. They had grown to be very confidential; and M’Gruder, after inquiring what Tony proposed to himself by way of a livelihood, gave him a brief sketch of his own rise from very humble beginnings to a condition of reasonably fair comfort and sufficiency.
“I ‘m in rags, ye see, Mr. Butler,” said he, “my father was in rags before me.”
“In rags!” cried Tony, looking at the stout sleek broadcloth beside him.
“I mean,” said the other, “I ‘m in the rag trade, and we supply the paper-mills; and that’s why my brother Sam lives away in Italy. Italy is a rare place for rags, – I take it they must have no other wear, for the supply is inexhaustible, – and so Sam lives in a seaport they call Leghorn; and the reason I speak of it to you is that if this messenger trade breaks down under you, or that ye ‘d not like it, there’s Sam there would be ready and willing to lend you a hand; he ‘d like a fellow o’ your stamp, that would go down amongst the wild places on the coast, and care little about the wild people that live in them. Mayhap this would be beneath you, though?” said he, after a moment’s pause.
“I ‘m above nothing at this moment except being dependent; I don’t want to burden my mother.”
“Dolly told us about your fine relations, and the high and mighty folk ye belong to.”
“Ay, but they don’t belong to me, – there ‘s the difference,” said Tony, laughing; then added, in a more thoughtful tone, “I never suspected that Dolly spoke of me.”
“That she did, and very often too. Indeed, I may say that she talked of very little else. It was Tony this and Tony that; and Tony went here and Tony went there; till one day Sam could bear it no longer – for you see Sam was mad in love with her, and said over and over again that he never met her equal. Sam says to me, ‘Bob,’ says he, ‘I can’t bear it any more.’ ‘What is it,’ says I, ‘that you can’t bear?’ – for I thought it was something about the drawback duty on mixed rags he was meaning. But no, sirs; it was that he was wild wi’ jealousy, and couldn’t bear her to be a-talkin’ about you. ‘I think,’ says he, ‘if I could meet that same Tony, I ‘d crack his neck for him.’”
“That was civil, certainly!” said Tony, dryly.
“‘And as I can’t do that, I ‘ll just go and ask her what she means by it all, and if Tony’s her sweetheart?’”
“He did not do that!” Tony cried, half angrily.
“Yes, but he did, though; and what for no? You would n’t have a man lose his time pricing a bale of goods when another had bought them? If she was in treaty with you, Mr. Butler, where was the use of Sam spending the day trying to catch a word wi’ her? So, to settle the matter at once, he overtook her one morning going to early meeting with the children, and he had it out.”
“Well, well?” asked Tony, eagerly.
“Well, she told him there never was anything like love between herself and you; that you were aye like brother and sister; that you knew each other from the time you could speak; that of all the wide world she did not know any one so well as you; and then she began to cry, and cried so bitterly that she had to turn back home again, and go to her room as if she was taken ill; and that’s the way Mrs. M’Gruder came to know what Sam was intending. She never suspected it before; but, hech sirs! if she did n’t open a broadside on every one of us! And the upshot was, Dolly was packed off home to her father; Sam went back to Leghorn; and there’s Sally and Maggie going back in everything ever they learned; for it ain’t every day you pick up a lass like that for eighteen pounds a year, and her washing.”
“But did he ask her to marry him?” cried Tony.
“He did. He wrote a letter – a very good and sensible letter too – to her father. He told him that he was only a junior, with a small share, but that he had saved enough to furnish a house, and that he hoped, with industry and care and thrifty ways, he would be able to maintain a wife decently and well; and he referred to Dr. Forbes of Auchterlonie for a character of him; and I backed it myself, saying, in the name of the house, it was true and correct.”
“What answer came to this?”
“A letter from the minister, saying that the lassie was poorly, and in so delicate a state of health it would be better not to agitate her by any mention of this kind for the present; meanwhile he would take up his information from Dr. Forbes, whom he knew well; and if the reply satisfied him, he ‘d write again to us in the course of a week or two; and Sam’s just waiting patiently for his answer, and doing his best, in the mean while, to prepare, in case it’s a favorable one.”
Tony fell into a revery. That story of a man in love with one it might never be his destiny to win had its own deep significance for him. Was there any grief, was there any misery, to compare with it? And although Sam M’Gruder, the junior partner in the rag trade, was not a very romantic sort of character, yet did he feel an intense sympathy for him. They were both sufferers from the same malady, – albeit Sam’s attack was from a very mild form of the complaint.
“You must give me a letter to your brother,” said he at length. “Some day or other I ‘m sure to be in Italy, and I’d like to know him.”