This brought back the girl to the original question. "But now," she said, drying her eyes, "there is no choice--we must leave it. I suppose that is what this Mr. Mildmay has really come about? He will give you some little time, I suppose. But papa, papa!" said Cicely, with a stamp of her foot to emphasize her words, "don't you see you _must_ decide something--make up your mind to something? Hoping on till the last day will do no good to any one. And to think we should be so deep in debt! Oh, papa, what are we to do?"
"My dear, do not be hard upon me," said poor St. John; "I acknowledge, indeed, that it was my fault."
"It was not your fault--but I don't blame anybody. There was illness and weakness, and some people can and some people can't," said Cicely, with that mercy and toleration which are always, I fear, more or less, the offspring of contempt. "Let us not go back upon that--but, oh, tell me, what is to be done now?"
Mr. St. John shook his venerable head piteously. "What do you think, Cicely?" he said.
This was all she could get from him; and, oh, how glad he was when he was permitted to go to bed, and be done with it! He could not tell what to do--anything he had ever done had been done for him (if it is not a bull to say so), and he had no more idea what independent step to take in this emergency, than one of the little boys had, to whose room he paid a half-surreptitious visit on his way to his own. Poor little souls! they were surreptitious altogether; even their father felt they had no right to be there in his daughters' way. He went in, shading his candle with his hand, not to disturb the slumbers of Annie, the little nursemaid, and approached the two little cots on tip-toe, and looked at the two little white faces on the pillows. "Poor little things," he said to himself. Miss Brown was well out of it; she had escaped all this trouble, and could not be called to account, either for the babies, or those debts, which thus rose up against her in judgment. A dim giddiness of despair had made Mr. St. John's head swim while his daughter was questioning him; but now that the pressure was removed he was relieved. He sighed softly as he left the subject altogether, and said his prayers, and slept soundly enough. Neither the debts nor the babies weighed upon him--at least "no more than reason;" he was quite able to sleep and to forget.