will think a little longer,{131} Charley, and me longest of all, but not for ever. But at present we are not happy. We will escape something—the pitying, and the sympathy, and the inquiries—at least we shall escape all that. I am sure my father would think so. But how we are to tell him I don’t know,” she cried again. “He is quite cheerful; he is like a child; but if we take him home, and it is not Ellermore, he will know.”
{131}
They had both dried their tears as they contemplated this difficulty, which neither knew how to deal with. I had been naturally left outside of this discussion; but to hear them thus debating, consulting each other, arguing on the main thing to be done, was more than I could bear. I could not but remember the happy house, with all its advantages and homely wealth—the boats on the loch, the grouse on the hills, the luxury and abundance. That door had never been shut upon the stranger or the poor. And they were so{132} entirely to the manner born, seated in their old house among their native hills, it seemed impossible to conceive of them in another place in other circumstances. This made it all the more wonderful to perceive that neither of them hesitated a moment. The thought of how to tell their father, how to keep him in his present state of cheerful unconsciousness, moved them indeed with a pang of bewilderment; but no irresolution, no clinging to what they liked best, no outcry against the cruel fate which deprived them of their home, was in the thoughts of either. There may be people to whom this choice would seem want of feeling. To me the quiet heroism was far more touching than any heroics. I knew the wrench it would be, and I respected them all the more that neither of them made anything of this, or even paused over it, as if the sacrifice were too much. I went home, leaving them together, with a pang in my heart of power{133}lessness to help them. I wonder whether the very rich are ever worked upon by those burning desires to help, to step forth and act as the providence of the suffering, which so often flame up in the bosoms of the comparatively poor. I had enough for my own wants, and desired riches little, but when I thought of stepping in to their aid, of becoming their surety and helper, my heart burned within me. I thought almost hungrily of an inheritance which was coming to me, which up to this moment I had been very well content to wait for. I wonder, I repeat, if such longings never come to the very rich who could indulge them with ease and without any personal struggle. Perhaps not; or one would hear something of it. As it is, the Quixotes of private life are seldom millionaires. I could do nothing; and
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