Mr. Gibson did not speak much about the grief at the loss of his
wife, which it was supposed that he felt. Indeed, he avoided all
demonstrations of sympathy, and got up hastily and left the room
when Miss Phoebe Browning first saw him after his loss, and burst
into an uncontrollable flood of tears, which threatened to end in
hysterics. Miss Browning declared she never could forgive him for his
hard-heartedness on that occasion; but a fortnight afterwards she
came to very high words with old Mrs. Goodenough, for gasping out her
doubts whether Mr. Gibson was a man of deep feeling; judging by the
narrowness of his crape hat-band, which ought to have covered his
hat, whereas there was at least three inches of beaver to be seen.
And, in spite of it all, Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe considered
themselves as Mr. Gibson's most intimate friends, in right of their
regard for his dead wife, and would fain have taken a quasi-motherly
interest in his little girl, had she not been guarded by a watchful
dragon in the shape of Betty, her nurse, who was jealous of any
interference between her and her charge; and especially resentful and
disagreeable towards all those ladies who, by suitable age, rank, or
propinquity, she thought capable of "casting sheep's eyes at master."
Several years before the opening of this story, Mr. Gibson's position
seemed settled for life, both socially and professionally. He was
a widower, and likely to remain so; his domestic affections were
centred on little Molly, but even to her, in their most private
moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings;
his most caressing appellation for her was "Goosey," and he took a
pleasure in bewildering her infant mind with his badinage. He had
rather a contempt for demonstrative people, arising from his medical
insight into the consequences to health of uncontrolled feeling. He
deceived himself into believing that still his reason was lord of
all, because he had never fallen into the habit of expression on any
other than purely intellectual subjects. Molly, however, had her own
intuitions to guide her. Though her papa laughed at her, quizzed her,
joked at her, in a way which the Miss Brownings called "really cruel"
to each other when they were quite alone, Molly took her little
griefs and pleasures, and poured them into her papa's ears, sooner
even than into Betty's, that kind-hearted termagant. The child grew
to understand her father well, and the two had the most delightful
intercourse together--half banter, half seriousness, but altogether
confidential friendship. Mr. Gibson kept three servants; Betty, a
cook, and a girl who was supposed to be housemaid, but who was under
both the elder two, and had a pretty life of it in consequence.
Three servants would not have been required if it had not been Mr.
Gibson's habit, as it had been Mr. Hall's before him, to take two
"pupils" as they were called in the genteel language of Hollingford,
"apprentices" as they were in fact--being bound by indentures, and
paying a handsome premium to learn their business. They lived in the
house, and occupied an uncomfortable, ambiguous, or, as Miss Browning
called it with some truth, "amphibious" position. They had their
meals with Mr. Gibson and Molly, and were felt to be terribly in the
way; Mr. Gibson not being a man who could make conversation, and
hating the duty of talking under restraint. Yet something within him
made him wince, as if his duties were not rightly performed, when,
as the cloth was drawn, the two awkward lads rose up with joyful
alacrity, gave him a nod, which was to be interpreted as a bow,
knocked against each other in their endeavours to get out of the
dining-room quickly; and then might be heard dashing along a passage
which led to the surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet
the annoyance he felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled
duties only made his sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or
ill manners, more bitter than before.