now and then I can get a look into the bay, and
Weymouth--looking like the old time.' That was his first sorrowful
intonation; but the next had the freshness of his age, 'And there are
thistles!'

'Thistles?'

'I thought you cared for thistles; for Miss May showed me one at
Coombe; but it was not like what they are here--the spikes pointing out
and pointing in along the edges of the leaves, and the scales lapping
over so wonderfully in the bud.'

'Picciola!' said the Doctor to himself; and aloud, 'Then you have time
to enjoy them?'

'When we are at work at a distance, dinner is brought out, and there is
an hour and a half of rest; and on Sunday we may walk about the yards.
You should have seen one of our gang, when I got him to look at the
chevaux de frise round a bud, how he owned it was a regular patent
invention; it just answered to Paley's illustration.'

'What, the watch?' said the Doctor, seeing that the argument had been
far from trite to his young friend. 'So you read Paley?'

'I read all such books as I could get up there,' he answered; 'they
gave one something to think about.'

'Have you no time for reading here?'

'Oh, no! I am too sleepy to read except on school days and Sundays,'
he said, as if this were a great achievement.

'And your acquaintance--is he a reader of Paley too?'

'I believe the chaplain set him on it. He is a clerk, like me, and not
much older. He is a regular Londoner, and can hardly stand the work;
but he won't give in if he can help it, or we might not be together.'

Much the Doctor longed to ask what sort of a friend this might be, but
the warder's presence forbade him; and he could only ask what they saw
of each other.

'We were near one another in school at Pentonville, and knew each
other's faces quite well, so that we were right glad to be put into the
same gang. We may walk about the yard together on Sunday evening too.'

The Doctor had other questions on his lips that he again restrained,
and only asked whether the Sundays were comfortable days.

'Oh, yes,' said Leonard, eagerly; but then he too recollected the
official, and merely said something commonplace about excellent
sermons, adding, 'And the singing is admirable. Poor Averil would envy
such a choir as we have! We sing so many of the old Bankside hymns.'

'To make your resemblance to Dante's hill of penitence complete, as
Ethel says,' returned the Doctor.

'I should like it to be a hill of purif