human
Aunty, I have had the most extraordinary letter, cried Grace, coming in with her eyes quite dreadful;
gpt
The stamp of the office, do you mean, my dear? Oh yes, you are welcome to see, Grace. Here it is, 'George-town, Demerara.' The date is not quite clear without my spectacles. Those foreign dies are always cut so badly.
human
Never mind the date, aunt. I have the date inside, in my dear father's writing. But I am quite astonished how my father can have heard----
gpt
Something about you, sly little puss! You need not blush so, for I long have guessed it.
human
But indeed it is not true--indeed it is not. I may have been amused, but I never, never--and oh, what he says then of somebody else--such a thing I should have thought impossible! How can one have any faith in any one?
gpt
My dear child, what you mean is this: How can one have any faith in worldly and ungodly people? With their mouths they speak deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips----
human
Oh no, he never was ungodly; to see him walk would show you that; and if being good to the poor sick people, and dashing into the middle of the whooping-cough----
gpt
How am I to know of whom you speak? You appear to have acted in a very forward way with some one your father disapproves of.
human
I assure you, I never did anything of the kind. It is not at all my manner. I thought you considered it wrong to make unfounded accusations.
gpt
Grace, what a most un-Christian temper you still continue to display at times! Your cheeks are quite red, and your eyes excited, in a way very sad to witness. The trouble I have taken is beyond all knowledge. If you do not value it, your father does.
human
Aunty Patch, may I see exactly what my daddy says to you? I will show you mine if you will show me yours.
gpt
My dear, you seem to forget continually. You treat me as if I were of your own age, and had never been through the very first alarm which comes for our salvation. It has not come to you, or you could not be so frivolous and worldly as you are. When first it rang, even for myself----
human
How many times does it ring, Aunt? I mean for every individual sinner, as you always call us.
gpt
My dear, it rings three times, as has been proved by the most inspired of all modern preachers, the Rev. Wm. Romaine, while amplifying the blessed words of the pious Joseph Alleine. He begins his discourse upon it thus----
human
Aunty, you have told me that so many times that I could go up into his desk and do it. It is all so very good and superior; but there are times when it will not come. You, or at any rate I, for certain, may go down on our knees and pray, and nothing ever comes of it. I have been at it every night and morning, really quite letting go whatever I was thinking of--and what is there to come of it, except this letter? And it doesn't sound as if my father ever wrote a word of it.
gpt
Grace, what do you mean, if you please?
human
I mean what I do not please. I mean that I have been here at least five months, as long as any fifty, and have put up with the miserablest things--now, never mind about my English, if you please, it is quite good enough for such a place as this--and have done my very best to put up with you, who are enough to take fifty people's lives away, with perpetual propriety--and have hoped and hoped, and prayed and prayed, till my knees are not fit to be looked at--and now, after all, what has come of it? That I am to marry a boy with a red cord down his legs, and a crystal in his whip, and a pretty face that seems to come from his mamma's watch-pocket, and a very nice and gentle way of looking at a lady, as if he were quite capable, if he had the opportunity, of saying 'bo' to any goose on the other side of the river!
gpt
My dear, do you prefer bold ruffians, then, like the vagabond you were rescued from?
human
I don't know at all what I do prefer, Aunt Patch, unless it is just to be left to myself, and have nothing to say to any one.
gpt
Why, Grace, that is the very thing you complained of in your sinful and ungrateful speech, just now! But do not disturb me with any more temper. I must take the opportunity, before the mail goes out, to tell your poor sick father how you have received his letter.
human
Oh no, if you please not. You are quite mistaken, if you think that I thought of myself first. My dear father knows that I never would do that; and it would be quite vain to tell him so. Oh, my darling, darling father!--where are you now, and whatever are you doing?
gpt
Grace, you are becoming outrageous quite. You know quite well where your father is; and as to what he is doing, you know from his own letter that he is lying ill, and longing for you to attend upon him. And this is the way that you qualify yourself!
human
Somehow or other now--I do not mean to be wicked, aunt--but I don't think my father ever wrote that letter--I mean, at any rate, of his own free will. Somebody must have stood over him--I feel as if I really saw them--and made him say this, and that, and things that he never used to think of saying. Why, he never would have dreamed, when he was well, of telling me I was to marry anybody. He was so jealous of me, he could hardly bear any gentleman to dare to smile; and he used to make me promise to begin to let him know, five years before I thought of any one. And now for him to tell me to marry in a week--just as if he was putting down a silver-side to salt--and to marry a boy that he scarcely ever heard of, and never even introduced to me--he must have been, he cannot but have been, either wonderfully affected by the climate, or shackled down in a slave-driver's dungeon, until he had no idea what he was about.
gpt
Have you finished, Grace, now? Is your violence over?
human
No; I have no violence; and it is not half over. But still, if you wish to say anything, I will do all I can to listen to it.
gpt
You are most obliging. One would really think that I were seventeen, and you nearly seventy.
human
Aunt Patch, you know that I am as good as nineteen; and instead of being seventy you are scarcely fifty-five.
gpt
Grace, your memory is better about ages than about what you do not wish to hear of. And you do not wish to hear, with the common selfishness of the period, of the duty which is the most sacred of all, and at the same time the noblest privilege--the duty of self-sacrifice. What are your own little inclinations, petty conceits, and miserable jokes--jokes that are ever at deadly enmity with all deep religion--ah, what are they--you selfish and frivolous girl!--when set in the balance with a parent's life--and a parent whose life would have been in no danger but for his perfect devotion to you?
human
Aunt Patch, I never heard you speak of my father at all in that sort of way before. You generally talk of him as if he were careless, and worldly, and heterodox, most frivolous, and quite unregenerate. And now quite suddenly you find out all his value. What do you want me to do so much, Aunt Patch?
gpt
Don't look at me like that, child; you quite insult me. As if it could matter to me what you do--except for your own eternal welfare. If you think it the right thing to let your father die in a savage land, calling vainly for you, and buried among land-crabs without a drop of water--that is a matter for you hereafter to render your own account of. You have tired me, Grace. I am not so young as you are; and I have more feeling. I must lie down a little; you have so upset me. When you have recovered your proper frame of mind, perhaps you will kindly see that Margery has washed out the little brown teapot.
human
To be sure, aunty, I am up to all her tricks. And I will just toast you a water-biscuit, and put a morsel of salt butter on it, scarcely so large as a little French bean. Go to sleep, aunty, for about an hour. I am getting into a very proper frame of mind; I can never stay very long out of it. May I go into the wood, just to think a little of my darling father's letter?
gpt
Yes, Grace; but not for more than half an hour, on condition that you speak to no one. You have made my head ache sadly. Leave your father's letter here.
human
Oh no, if you please, let me take it with me. How can I think without it?
gpt
Very well; let me see it again when you have made the tea.