All this is over now. I knew it was. I sat by the fire, watching her play off her loving jests upon her father, and prattle with him, childish-like, about all that was going on downstairs.
“You little quiz!” he cried at last. “Doctor, this girl is growing--I can't say witty--but absolutely mischievous.”
I said, talents long dormant sometimes appeared. We might yet discover in Miss Theodora Johnston the most brilliant wit of her day.
“Doctor Urquhart, it's a shame! How can you laugh at me so? But I don't care. You are all the better for having somebody to laugh at. You know you are.”
I did know it--only too well, and my eyes might have betrayed it, for hers sank. She coloured a little, sat down to her work, and sewed on silently, thoughtfully, for a good while.
What was in her mind? Was it pity? Did she fancy she had hurt me--touched unwittingly one of my many sores? She knows I have had a hard life, with few pleasures in it; she would gladly give me some; she is sorry for me.
Most people's compassion is worse than their indifference; but hers--given out of the fullness of the pure, tender, unsuspicious heart--I can bear it. I can be grateful for it.
On this first evening that broke the uniformity of the sick-room, we thought it better, she and I, considering the peculiarities of the rest of the family, which she seems to take for granted I am aware of, and can make allowance for--that none of them should be admitted this night. A prohibition not likely to afflict them much.
“And pray, Miss Dora, how do you mean to entertain the doctor and me?”
“I mean to give you a large dose of my brilliant conversation, and, lest it becomes too exciting, to season it with a little reading, out of something that neither of you take the smallest interest in, and will be able to go to sleep over properly. Poetry--most likely.”
She coloured deeply. “Hush, papa, I thought you had forgotten--you said it was 'nonsense,' you know.”
“Very likely it was. But I mean to give it another reading some day. Never mind--nobody heard.”
So she writes poetry. I always knew she was very clever, besides being well-educated. Talented women--modern Corinnes--my impression of them was rather repulsive. But she--that soft, shy girl, with her gay simplicity, her meek, household ways--