ed,"--"No more fit than a baby,"--"Abel Fletcher be clean
mad,"--"Hope Thomas Jessop will speak out plain, and tell him so," and
the like. From these, and from her strange fit of tenderness, I
guessed what was looming in the distance--a future which my father
constantly held in terrorem over me, though successive illness had kept
it in abeyance. Alas! I knew that my poor father's hopes and plans
were vain! I went into his presence with a heavy heart.

There is no need to detail that interview. Enough, that after it he
set aside for ever his last lingering hope of having a son able to
assist, and finally succeed him in his business, and that I set aside
every dream of growing up to be a help and comfort to my father. It
cost something on both our parts; but after that day's discussion we
tacitly covered over the pain, and referred to it no more.

I came back into the garden, and told John Halifax all. He listened
with his hand on my shoulder, and his grave, sweet look--dearer
sympathy than any words! Though he added thereto a few, in his own
wise way; then he and I, also, drew the curtain over an inevitable
grief, and laid it in the peaceful chamber of silence.

When my father, Dr. Jessop, John Halifax, and I, met at dinner, the
subject had passed into seeming oblivion, and was never afterwards
revived.

But dinner being over, and the chatty little doctor gone, while Abel
Fletcher sat mutely smoking his pipe, and we two at the window
maintained that respectful and decorous silence which in my young days
was rigidly exacted by elders and superiors, I noticed my father's eyes
frequently resting, with keen observance, upon John Halifax. Could it
be that there had recurred to him a hint of mine, given faintly that
morning, as faintly as if it had only just entered my mind, instead of
having for months continually dwelt there, until a fitting moment
should arrive?--Could it be that this hint, which he had indignantly
scouted at the time, was germinating in his acute brain, and might bear
fruit in future days? I hoped so--I earnestly prayed so. And to that
end I took no notice, but let it silently grow.

The June evening came and went. The service-bell rang out and ceased.
First, deep shadows, and then a bright star, appeared over the
Abbey-tower. We watched it from the garden, where, Sunday after
Sunday, in fine weather, we used to lounge, and talk over all manner of
things in heaven and in earth, chiefly end