“It is all right,” he cried, when Miss Bethune at last made a dart at her attendant, and gave her, what is called in feminine language, “a shake,” to bring her to herself.
“Are you out of your wits, woman?” Miss Bethune exclaimed. “Go away and leave me to look after the bairns, if ye cannot keep your head. Are you out of your wits?”
“Indeed, mem, and I have plenty of reason, Gilchrist said, weeping, and feeling for her apron, while the dish in her hand wavered wildly; and then it was that Harry Gordon, coming to himself, cried out that it was all right.
“And I am going to have some of that,” he added, steadying the kind creature, whose instinct of service had more effect than either encouragement or reproof. And this little touch of reality settled him too. He began to respond a little, to rouse himself, even to see the humour of the situation, at which Dora had begun to laugh, but which brought a soft moisture, in which was ease and consolation, to his eyes.
It was not until about an hour later that Miss Bethune was left alone with the young man. He had begun by this time to speak about himself. “I am not so discouraged as you think,” he said, “I don’t seem to be afraid. After all, it doesn’t matter much, does it, what happens to a young fellow all alone in the world? It’s only me, anyhow. I have no wife,” he said, with a faint laugh, “no sister to be involved--nothing but my own rather useless person, a thing of no account. It wasn’t that that knocked me down. It was just the feeling of the end of everything, and that she was laid there that had been so good to me--so good--and nothing ever to be done for her any more.”
“I can forgive you that,” said Miss Bethune, with a sort of sob in her throat. “And yet she was ill to you, unjust at the last.”
“No, not that. I have had everything, too much for a man capable of earning his living to accept--but then it seemed all so natural, it was the common course of life. I was scarcely waking up to see that it could not be.”
“And a cruel rousing you have had at last, my poor boy.”
“No,” he said steadily, “I will never allow it was cruel; it has been sharp and effectual. It couldn’t help being effectual, could it? since I have no alternative. The pity is I am good for so little. No education to speak of.”