They were instantly checked as she heard her father returning, but not so that he did not perceive them, and exclaim that it had been too much for her. “Oh, no--it was only the first time,” said Margaret, losing the sense of the painful vacancy in her absorbing desire not to distress her father, and thinking only of him as she watched him standing for some minutes leaning on the mantel-shelf with his hand shading his forehead.
She began to speak as soon as she thought he was ready to have his mind turned away: “How nicely Ritchie managed! He carried me so comfortably and easily. It is enough to spoil me to be so deftly waited on.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Dr. May; “I am sure the change is better for you;” but he came and looked at her still with great solicitude.
“Ritchie can take excellent care of me,” she continued, most anxious to divert his thoughts. “You see it will do very well indeed for you to take Harry to school.”
“I should like to do so. I should like to see his master, and to take Norman with me,” said the doctor. “It would be just the thing for him now--we would show him the dockyard, and all those matters, and such a thorough holiday would set him up again.”
“Much better--he is recovering spirits and tone very fast. That leaf-work of yours came at a lucky time. I like to see him looking out for a curious fern in the hedgerows--the pursuit has quite brightened him up.”
“And he does it so thoroughly,” said Margaret. “Ethel fancies it is rather frivolous of him, I believe; but it amuses me to see how men give dignity to what women make trifling. He will know everything about the leaves, hunts up my botany books, and has taught me a hundred times more of the construction and wonders of them than I ever learned.”
“Ay,” said the doctor, “he has been talking a good deal to me about vegetable chemistry. He would make a good scientific botanist, if he were to be nothing else. I should be glad if he sticks to it as a pursuit--‘tis pretty work, and I should like to have gone further with it, if I had ever had time for it.”
“I dare say he will,” said Margaret. “It will be very pleasant if he can go with you. How he would enjoy the British Museum, if there was time for him to see it! Have you said anything to him yet?”