THE PRODIGAL SON.
BY DUTTON COOK, AUTHOR OF “PAUL FOSTER’S DAUGHTER,” &c.
“A lytel misgoyng in the gynning causeth mykel errour in the end.”—Chaucer’s “Testament of Love.”
CHAPTER I. GOOD ACCOMMODATION FOR MAN AND BEAST.
Would he live through the night? Would he die before his eldest son arrived? Could it be that the parent and the child, separated since so many years, were not to meet again on this side of the grave? How many times had the sun gone down upon their wrath, and risen again to find it yet turbulent and restless, and surging like a sea that would not be stayed! And now would not even Death bring penitence, and peace, and forgiveness?
Who could answer? Not pale Mr. Fuller, the surgeon of Grilling Abbots, the nearest town: not Dr. Barker, who had come over expressly summoned from the Mowle Infirmary: not Dr. Chillingworth, who had hurried down post-haste from London. They had met in serious conclave round the sick man’s bed. They had held a solemn—almost a grim—consultation upon the case. They had retired to the library adjoining, and whispered each other, and compared notes. They talked so earnestly, yet in voices so subdued they were inaudible a few yards off, while their heads approached together in so close a cluster that they seemed almost to pertain to one body, and looked like three apples growing on a single stalk. Pale Mr. Fuller went through a sort of friendly cross-examination as to the course of treatment he had pursued; he set forth his medicines and his motives in applying them: he stated his knowledge of the invalid, with particulars as to age, constitution, previous illnesses, predisposition to disease, &c. The doctor from Mowle patted the surgeon of Grilling Abbots familiarly, yet approvingly, on the shoulder. The physician from London patted both his professional brothers on the back, and nodded a great many times his approbation at all they had said and done. “Nothing could have been better—nothing, nothing,” he said; and they had each a glass of Madeira and a biscuit. They could not answer, they said, for the poor sufferer’s life: no, they agreed,—not from one moment to another.
Who could answer, then, if these could not? Certainly not that cosy group of guests round the