Never had Neil been more gracious or agreeable than during the interval when he was waiting for the answer to his letter. He felt sure of a favorable reply and that Bessie would be his before the June roses were in bloom, and that of itself kept him in a happy frame of mind. He was very attentive to Blanche and very kind to his mother, and he wrote long letters to Bessie three times a week, and went to church every Sunday and gave a half-penny to every little ragged child he met, and felt that Neil McPherson was a pretty good fellow after all.
At last the letter came, and Neil read it in the privacy of his room, and, being alone with no one to hear, called his aunt a name which sounded a little like swearing, and paced up and down the apartment with the perspiration standing thickly around his white lips, and a feeling at his heart as if he were not only bitterly disappointed but had also been insulted by the offer made to him.
"An overseer in some cotton mills!--factories they call them there. Not if I know myself!" he said. "I stoop to that? Never! The old woman is a fool," (this with an adjective), "and she evidently thinks she is doing a big thing. Two thousand dollars a year! Why, that is not much more than mother allows me now, and I am awfully hard up at times. No, Bessie, you must wait a little longer until something turns up, as I am sure there will. An overseer! I!" and Neil's voice was indicative of the scorn and contempt with which he regarded an overseer of cotton mills, and the vast difference he felt there was between such an individual and himself.
Neil was very sore and very much depressed, and his depression told upon his health, and he became so pale and haggard that his mother was alarmed, and insisted upon his leaving England for a time and going down to Cannes, in Southern France, where several of her friends were spending the winter. To this Neil made no objection, and wrote to Bessie of his plans, and made himself out so great an invalid that Bessie felt a fear in her heart lest her lover should die and she be left in the world alone, in case--She did not dare finish the thought, or put into words her conviction that her father was daily growing weaker, with less care for or interest in any thing passing around him. This change for the worse had commenced with a heavy cold, taken soon after the holidays, and which none of Dorothy's prescriptions could reach. It was in vain that Bessie tried to persuade him to let her call a physician.