I waited for an answer, but none was given. No excuse, or apology, or even polite acknowledgment. Politeness!--that would have been the sharpest unkindness of all. Then they overtook us, and the chance was over. Colin advanced, but Doctor Urquhart put me into the carriage himself, and as Colin was restoring the plaid, said rather irritably:--"No, no, let her wrap herself in it, going home." Not another word passed between us, except that, as I remembered afterwards, just before they came up, he had said, "Good-bye," hastily adding to it, "God bless you." Some people's words--people who usually express very little--rest in one's mind strangely. Why should he say "God bless you?" Why did he call me "child?" I sent back his plaid by Colin next morning, with a message of thanks, and that "it had kept me very warm." I wonder if I shall ever see Doctor Urquhart again? And yet it is not the seeing one's friends, the having them within reach, the hearing of and from them, which makes them ours--many a one has all that, and yet has nothing. It is the believing in them, the depending on them; assured that they are true and good to the core, and therefore could not but be good and true towards everybody else --ourselves included. Ay, whether we deserve it or not. It is not our deserts which are in question, but their goodness, which, once settled, the rest follows as a matter of course. They would be untrue to themselves if they were insincere or untrue to us. I have half-a-dozen friends, living within half-a-dozen miles, whom I feel further off from than I should from Doctor Urquhart if he lived at the Antipodes. He never uses words lightly. He never would have said "God bless you!" if he had not specially wished God to bless me--poor me! a foolish, ignorant, thoughtless child. Only a child--not a bit better nor wiser than a child: full of all binds of childish naughtinesses, angers, petulances, doubts--oh, if I knew he was at this minute sitting in our parlour, and I could run down and sit beside him, tell him all the hard things I have been thinking of him of late, and beg his pardon; asking him to be a faithful friend to me, and help me to grow into a better woman than I am ever likely to become--what an unutterable comfort it would be! A word or two more about my pleasant morning at the Cedars, and then I must close my desk and see that the study-fire is all right--papa likes a good fire when he comes home. There they are! what a loud ring! it made me jump from my chair. This must be finished to-morrow, when---- END OF VOL. I. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Life for a Life, Volume I (of III), by Dinah Maria Craik