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And rising, Reuben bent towards his niece. She rose on tiptoe, and just touched his rough cheek. There was no natural childish effusiveness in the action. For the seven years since she left her father, Louie had quite unlearnt kissing. Reuben proceeded up the lane to the gate leading to the moor. He was in the highest spirits. What a mercy he had not bothered Hannah with Mr. Ancrum's remarks!
'Well, good luck to you! said the minister, altering his position so as to look at his visitor full, and doing it with a slowness which showed that all movement was an effort. Look after your sister, Davy. David had sat down at Ancrum's invitation. He said nothing in answer to this last remark, and Ancrum could not decipher him in the darkness visible of the ill-trimmed lamp.
But this gradual perception that, in spite of her mode of killing spare time, she was not immediately likely to take any fatal false step, as he had imagined in his first dread did but increase his inward repulsion. A state of feeling which was the more remarkable because he himself, in Ancrum's eyes, was at the moment in a temper of moral relaxation and bewilderment!
How to keep the voluble Frenchman from bombarding David in his shattered state had been one of Mr. Ancrum's most anxious occupations since his return. It had been done, but it had been difficult. For to whom did David owe his first reports of Paris if not to the old comrade who had sent him there, found him a lodging, and taught him to speak French so as not to disgrace himself and his country?
Moreover, in the presence of that face of Mr. Ancrum's, a long, thin, slightly twisted face, with the stamp somehow of a tragic sincerity on the eyes and mouth, it was difficult to think as slightingly of his old friend as he had done for a good while past, apparently with excellent reason. 'I supposed there was something the matter, he blurted out at last.
But in the very midst of this overwhelming vision he said suddenly to himself: 'There is another way another answer Dora's way and Ancrum's. Aye, the way of faith, which asks for no length of years in which to win the goal, which is there at once in the beat of a wing safe on the breast of God!
When Ancrum softly put his head in, half an hour later, he was heavily asleep. Ancrum's face gleamed; he stole into the room carrying a rug and a pillow; and when David woke in the morning it was to see the twisted form of the little minister stretched still and soldierlike beside him on the floor. From that waking David rose and went about his work another man.
With such homely medicines nature and life can often do most for us. Such was Ancrum's belief, and in consequence he showed a very remarkable wisdom during these early days of David's return. 'As far as I can judge, there has been a bad shake to the heart in more senses than one, had been the dry remark of the Paris doctor; 'and as for nervous system, it's a mercy he's got any left.
The lad's careless good-humoured laugh under Ancrum's probings was evidence enough of how the land lay. Probably at the bottom of him, if he had examined, there lay the instinctive assumption that Dora was one of the girls who are not likely to marry. Men want them for sisters, daughters, friends and then go and fall in love with some minx that has a way with her.
All this troubled Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in the midst of some rising troubles of his own he found the energy to buttonhole Reuben again, and torment him afresh on the subject of a trade for the lad. Reuben, flushed and tremulous, went straight from the minister to his wife with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum's shove, as it were, fresh upon him.
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