Chapter 5 - Page 2

thought the lad had been so poetical; but, to be sure, there's a "Shakespeare" in the surgery library: I'll take it away and put "Johnson's Dictionary" instead. One comfort is the conviction of her perfect innocence - ignorance, I should rather say - for it is easy to see it's the first "confession of his love," as he calls it. But it's an awful worry - to begin with lovers so early. Why, she's only just seventeen, - not seventeen, indeed, till July; not for six weeks yet. Sixteen and three-quarters! Why, she's quite a baby. To be sure - poor Jeanie was not so old, and how I did love her! (Mrs Gibson's name was Mary, so he must have been referring to someone else.) Then his thoughts wandered back to other days, though he still held the open note in his hand. By-and-by his eyes fell upon it again, and his mind came back to bear upon the present time. 'I'll not be hard upon him. I'll give him a hint; he is quite sharp enough to take it. Poor laddie! if I send him away, which would be the wisest course, I do believe, he's got no home to go to.'

After a little more consideration in the same strain, Mr Gibson went and sat down at the writing-table and wrote the following formula: -

Master Coxe

('That "master" will touch him to the quick,' said Mr Gibson to himself as he wrote the word.)

Mr Gibson smiled a little sadly as he re-read his words. 'Poor Jeanie,' he said aloud. And then he chose out an envelope, enclosed the fervid love-letter, and the above prescription; sealed it with his own sharply-cut seal-ring, R. G., in Old-English letters, and then paused over the address.

'He'll not like Master Coxe outside; no need to put him to unnecessary shame.' So the direction on the envelope was -

Edward Coxe, Esq.

Then Mr Gibson applied himself to the professional business which had brought him home so opportunely and unexpectedly, and afterwards he went back through the garden to the stables; and just as he had mounted his horse, he said to the stable-man, - 'Oh! by the way, here's a letter for Mr Coxe. Don't send it through the women; take it round yourself to the surgery-door, and do it at once.'

The slight smile upon his face, as he rode out of the gates, died away as soon as he found himself in the solitude of the lanes. He slackened his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he considered, to have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in the same house with two young men, even if she only met them at meal-times; and all the intercourse they had with each other was merely the utterance of such words as, 'May I help you to potatoes?' or, as Mr Wynne would persevere in saying, 'May I assist you to potatoes?' - a form of speech which grated daily more and more upon Mr Gibson's cars. Yet Mr Coxe, the offender in this affair which had just occurred, had to remain for three years more as a pupil in Mr Gibson's family. He should be the very last of the race.