"Poor old man! You talk as if you were twenty years older than Uncle Lance."

"I sometimes think I am, and that I left my youth at Fiddler"s Ranch."

Wherewith he strolled to the piano, and began to improvise something so yearning and melancholy that Anna was not sorry when her uncle came back and mentioned the tune the old cow died of.

Was Gerald, the orphan of Fiddler"s Ranch, to be always the spoilt child of prosperity and the creature of modern life, with more aspirations than he saw how to fulfil, hampered as he was by duties, scruples, and affections?

CHAPTER III. -- DARBY AND JOAN

My reason haply more To bandy word for word and frown for frown; But now I see our lances are but straws!

SHAKESPEARE.

Lancelot saw his brother"s doctors the next morning, and communicated to his wife the upshot of the interview when they were driving to their meeting in Mrs. Grinstead"s victoria, each adorned with a big bunch of primroses.

"Two doctors! and not Tom," said Gertrude.

"Both Brownlows. Tom knows them well, and wrote. One lives at the East-end, and is sheet anchor to Whittingtonia. He began with Clement, but made the case over to the cousin, the fashionable one, when we made the great removal."

"So they consulted?"

"And fairly see the way out of the wood, though not by any means quit of it, poor Tina; but there"s a great deal to be thankful for," said Lance, with a long breath.

"Indeed there is!" said the wife, with a squeeze of the hand. "But is there any more to be feared?"

"Everything," Lance answered; "heart chiefly, but the lungs are not safe. He has been whirling his unfortunate machine faster and faster, till no wonder the mainspring has all but broken down. His ideal always was working himself to death, and only Felix could withhold him, so now he has fairly run himself down. No rest from that tremendous parish work, with the bothers about curates, school boards and board schools, and the threatened ritual prosecution, which came to nothing, but worried him almost as much as if it had gone on, besides all the trouble about poor Alda, and the loss of Fulbert took a great deal out of him.

When Somers got a living, there was no one to look after him, and he never took warning. So when in that Stinksmeech Mission he breathed pestiferous air and drank pestiferous water, he was finished up. They"ve got typhus down there--a very good thing too," he added vindictively.

"I put it further back than Mr. Somers" going," said Gertrude. "He never was properly looked after since Cherry married. What is he to do now?"

"Just nothing. If he wishes to live or have a chance of working again, he must go to the seaside and vegetate, attempt nothing for the next six months, nor even think about St. Matthew"s for a year, and, as they told me afterwards, be only able to go on cautiously even then."

"How did he take it?"

"He laid his head against Cherry, who was standing by his chair, put an arm round her, and said, "There!" and she gave him such a smile as I would not have missed seeing on any account. "Mine now," she said.

"Best!" he said. He is too much tired and worn out to vex himself about anything."

"Where are they to go? Not to Ewmouth, or all the family worries would come upon them. Alda would give him no peace."

"Certainly not there. Brownlow advises Rockquay. His delicate brother is a curate there, and it agrees with him better than any other place. So I am to go and see for a house for them. It is the very best thing for Cherry."

"Indeed it is. Was not she like herself last night? Anna says she has never brightened up so much before! I do believe that if Clement goes on mending, the dear person will have a good time yet; nay, all the better now that she is free to be a thorough-going Underwood again."

"You Underwooder than Underwood!"

"Exactly! I never did like--Yes, Lance, I am going to have it out. I do think Clement would have done better to let her alone."

"He did let her alone. He told me so."

"Yes, but she let out to me the difference between that time and the one of the first offer when dear Felix could not keep back his delight at keeping her; whereas she could not help seeing that she was a burthen on Clement"s soul, between fear of neglecting her and that whirl of parish work, and that St. Wulstan"s Hall was wanted for the girls" school.

Besides, Wilmet persuaded her."

"She did. But it turned out well. The old man worshipped her, and she was very fond of him."

"Oh! very well in a way, but you know better, Lance."

"Well, perhaps he did not begin young enough. He was a good, religious man, but Pro Ecclesia Dei had not been his war-cry from his youth, and he did not understand, and thought it clerical; good, but outside his life. Still, she was happy."

"Petting, Society, Art, travels! I had rather have had our two first years of tiffs than all that sort of happiness."

"Tiffs! I thought we might have gone in for the Dunmow flitch."

"You might! Do you mean that you forget how fractious and nasty and abominable I was, and how many headaches I gave you?"

"Only what you had to put up with."

"You don"t recollect that first visit of my father"s, when I was so frightfully cross because you said we must ask the Lambs and Bruces to dinner? You came down in the morning white as a ghost, an owl in its blinkers, and though I know you would rather have died than have uttered a word, no sooner were you off than he fell upon me with, "Mrs. Daisy, I give you to understand that you haven"t a husband made of such tough commodity as you are used to at home, and if you worry him you will have to rue it.""

"What an a.s.s I must have looked! Did I really go playing the martyr?"

"A very smiling martyr, pretending to be awfully jolly. I believe I requited papa by being very cross."

"At his interfering, eh? No wonder."

"Chiefly to conceal my fright, but I did begin trying not to fly out as I used to do, and I was frightened whenever I did so."

"Poor Daisy! That is why you always seemed to think every headache your fault."

"The final effect--I won"t say cure--was from that book on education which said that a child should never know a cross word or look between father and mother. So you really have forgotten how horrid I could be?"

"Or never felt it! But to return to our muttons. I can"t believe otherwise than that Cherry liked her old man, and if their parallel lines did not meet, she never found it out."

"That is true. She liked him and leant on him, and was constantly pleased and amused as well as idolized, but I don"t think the deep places in her heart were stirred. Then there were constraints. He could not stand Angela"s freaks. And his politics--"

"He was not so very much advanced."

"Enough not to like the "Pursuivant" to lie about, nor her writing for it, even about art or books; nor did his old bones enjoy the rivers at Vale Leston. Now you will see a rebound."

"Or will she be too tender of him to do what he disliked?"

"That will be the test. Now she has Clement, I expect an article will come on the first book they read together."

Lance laughed, but returned to defend his sister.