Читать книгу Dariel - R. D. Blackmore - Страница 11

"Most likely. I will go and see about it by-and-by. Old Jacob will always oblige me if he can. But you won't take away your sneezing trunk? You owe it to your native parish first."

"My native parish must abide its time. In country places there is seldom any outbreak of virulent diseases, until they set up a Local Board. I shall leave a score of Hygioptarmic boxes in your charge. The rest are meant for places where the authorities stir up the dregs of infection, and set them in slow circulation. And the first thing a Local Board always does is that."

I did not contradict him, for the subject was beyond me. And fond as I was of him, and always much enlarged by his visits, and the stirring up of my dull ideas, it so happened that I did not want him now, when so many things had to be considered, in which none of his discoveries would help me. In fact it seemed to me that he thought much more of his hygienic boxes, than of his and my dear sister.

When he was gone in the old rattle-trap from The Bell, with his trunk beneath his feet, my mother seemed inclined at first to think that no one had made enough of him.

"All for the benefit of others!" she exclaimed, after searching the distance for one last view of him, if, haply, the sun might come out for the purpose of showing his hat above some envious hedge; "Does that poor boy ever think of himself? What makes it the more remarkable is that this age is becoming so selfish, so wedded to all the smaller principles of action, so incapable of taking a large view of anything. But Harold, my Harold"—no words of the requisite goodness and greatness occurred to my dear mother, and so she resorted to her handkerchief. "It seems as if we always must be parted. It is for the good of mankind, no doubt; but it does seem hard, though no one except myself seems so to regard it. It was five o'clock yesterday before he came. It is not yet half-past ten, and to think of the rapidly-increasing distance—"

"I defy him to get more than five miles an hour out of that old screw," I said. "Not even with one of his Hygioptarmic boxes tied beneath the old chap's tail. Why, you can hear his old scuffle still, mother."

She listened intently, as if for a holy voice; while Grace looked at me with a pleasant mixture of reproach and sympathy. For who did all the real work? Who kept the relics of the property together? Who relieved the little household of nearly all its trouble? Who went to market to buy things without money, and (which is even harder still) to sell them when nobody wanted them? Who toiled like a horse, and much longer than a horse—however, I never cared to speak up for myself. As a general rule, I would rather not be praised. And as for being thanked, it is pleasant in its way, but apt to hurt the feelings of a very modest man; and, of course, he knows that it will not last. After such a speech from my dear mother, no one could have blamed me very severely, if I had put my fishing-rod together and refused to do another stroke of work that day.