"But we must not say too little; and if a man who is willing to sacrifice the half of his income is not to be thanked for it, I don't know who is," cried Mab, always practical.
"It is not so much the income," Cicely said, slightly wounded by this matter-of-fact suggestion; "it is the feeling."
"But the offer proves the feeling," said her sister; and indeed she was right.
Mr. St. John came home, as has been said, before his usual hour, and went very early to bed. Next morning he rang his bell--the most unusual sound--and sent word by Betsy that he thought he would not get up. When Cicely went to him--as she did at once in a fright, for the bell and the message together produced a great panic in a house quite unaccustomed (at least, so far as the girls' experience went) to illness--she found him in a partial doze, his large pale hand, looking very nerveless and feeble, lying outside the coverlet.
"No, no!" he said, when she roused him; "not very bad; not bad at all; only tired--and lazy. I have often thought of late that I should like to lie still some morning; and to-day I have done it. That's all, that's all, my dear." He would not hear of the doctor being sent for; and wanted nothing, he declared--nothing but a day's rest. Cicely had to go downstairs, feigning content with this; but she was far from satisfied. They talked it over all the morning, but there was little enough to be made of it. There was no harm in a day's laziness, and nothing but good in a day's rest; but yet--the girls did not know what to think. Had he been looking ill lately? they asked each other. But, no! he had not been looking ill--a little fatigued, perhaps; tired by the hot weather, as he often was; but just as usual, doing as much as he always did; spending the whole long day "in the parish;" ready to go out morning or night when he was called to any one who was sick. "And what so natural as that he should be tired?" Mab said; "a day's rest will do him good." Cicely, though she was generally the leader, accepted this decision humbly, saying nothing for her own part, but feeling a sense of dismay steal into her mind, she could not tell why; for though it was quite natural that he should do this, he had never done it before; and an innovation on habits so long established and firmly fixed was very alarming and bewildering. But Mab had the coolest judgment of the two, she said to herself--and no doubt Mab was right.