[With Kitchener in the Soudan by G. A. Henty]@TWC D-Link bookWith Kitchener in the Soudan CHAPTER 3: A Terrible Disaster 21/38
If he had stated his objections to the marriage calmly, there need have been no quarrel. Your father would assuredly have married me, in any case; and your grandfather might have refused to assist him, if he did so, but there need have been no breakup in the family, such as took place. "However, as it was, your father resented his tone, and what had been merely a difference of opinion became a serious quarrel, and they never saw each other, afterwards.
It was a great grief to me, and it was owing to that, and his being unable to earn his living in England, that your father brought me out here.
I believe he would have done well at home, though it would have been a hard struggle.
At that time I was very delicate, and was ordered by the doctors to go to a warm climate, and therefore your father accepted a position of a kind which, at least, enabled us to live, and obtained for me the benefit of a warm climate. "Then the chance came of his going up to the Soudan, and there was a certainty that, if the expedition succeeded, as everyone believed it would, he would have obtained permanent rank in the Egyptian army, and so recovered the position in life that he had voluntarily given up, for my sake." "And what was the illness you had, Mother ?" "It was an affection of the lungs, dear.
It was a constant cough, that threatened to turn to consumption, which is one of the most fatal diseases we have in England." "But it hasn't cured you, Mother, for I often hear you coughing, at night." "Yes, my cough has been a little troublesome of late, Gregory." Indeed, from the time of the disaster to the expedition of Hicks Pasha, Annie Hilliard had lost ground.
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