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280 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. |
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hover on the lips, and move the spirit, like a fluttered light, until the sympathetic figure trembles.
Doctor Jeddler, in spite of his system of philosophy—which he was continually contradicting and denying in practice, but more famous philosophers have done that—could not help having as much interest in the return of his old ward and pupil, as if it had been a serious event. So he sat himself down in his easy-chair again, stretched out his slippered feet once more upon the rug, read the letter over and over a great many times, and talked it over more times still.
" Ah ! The day was," said the Doctor, looking at the fire, " when you and he, Grace, used to trot about arm-in-arm, in his holiday time, like a couple of walking dolls. You remember ?"
"I remember," she answered, with her pleasant laugh, and plying her needle busily.
" This day month, indeed ?" mused the Doctor. " That hardly seems a twelvemonth ago. And where was my little Marion then !"
"Never far from her sister," said Marion, cheerily, "however little. Grace was everything to me, even when she was a young child herself."
" True, Puss, true," returned the Doctor. " She was a staid little woman, was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, quiet, pleasant body; bearing with our humours and anticipating our wishes, and always ready to forget her own, even in those times. I never knew you positive or obstinate, Grace, my darling, even then, on any subject but one."
" I am afraid I have changed sadly for the worse, since," laughed Grace, still busy at her work. " What was that one, father?"
" Alfred, of course," said the Doctor. " Nothing would serve you but you must be called Alfred's wife; so we called you Alfred's wife; and you liked it better, I believe (odd as it seems now), than being called a Duchess, if we could have made you one."
" Indeed !" said Grace, placidly.
" Why, don't you remember ?" inquired the Doctor.
"I think I remember something of it," she returned, "but not much. It's so long ago." And as she sat at work, she hummed the burden of an old song, which the Doctor liked.
"Alfred will find a real wife soon," she said, breaking off; " and that will be a happy time indeed for all of us. My three years' trust is nearly at an end, Marion. It has been a very easy one, I shall tell Alfred, when I give you back to him, that you |
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