"I presume you know that I am about to run away, Miss Carey," said Dr. Knox, hastening up to join her one Sunday evening when they were coming out of church at Lefford.
"As if every one did not know that!" cried Mina. "Where's mamma, Arnold? and Lotty?"
"They are behind, talking to the Parkers."
The Parkers were great friends of Mina's, so she ran back. The doctor and Janet walked slowly on.
"You will be glad to leave, sir," said Janet, in her humble fashion. "Things have not been very comfortable for you at home--and I hear you are taking a much better post."
"I shall be sorry to leave for one thing--that is, because I fear things may be more uncomfortable for you," he spoke out bravely. "What Rose Villa will be when all restraint is taken from the children, and with other undesirable things, I don't like to imagine."
"I shall do very well," said Janet, meekly.
"I wonder you put up with it," he exclaimed. "You might be ten thousand times better and happier elsewhere."
"But I fear to change: I have no one to recommend me or to look out for me, you know."
"There's that lady I've heard you speak of--your aunt, Miss Cattledon."
"I could not think of troubling her. My mother's family do not care to take much notice of me. They thought my father was not my mother's equal in point of family, and when she married him, they turned her off, as it were. No, sir, I have only myself to look to."
"A great many of us are in the same case," he said. "Myself, for instance. I have been indulging I don't know what day-dreams for some time past: one of them that Mr. Tamlyn would give me a share in his practice: and--and there were others to follow in due course. Vain dreams all, and knocked on the head now."
"You will be sure to get on," said Janet.
"Do you think so?" he asked very softly, looking down into Janet's nice eyes by the gaslight in the road.
"Arnold!--come back, Arnold; I want you to give me your arm up the hill," called out Mrs. Knox.
Dr. Knox had to enter on his new situation at quarter-day, the twenty-fifth of December; so he went up to London on Christmas-Eve. Which was no end of a blow to old Tamlyn, as it left all the work on his own shoulders for a week.
From two to three months passed on. One windy March day, Mrs. Knox sat alone in the garden-room, worrying over her money matters. The table, drawn near the fire, was strewed with bills and tradesmen's books; the sun shone on the closed glass-doors.