abasement--came
flooding back upon him. With a movement of joy and penitence he threw
himself at the feet of Catherine's Master and his own: _'Fix there thy
resting-place, my soul!_'

CHAPTER XX

Catherine's later convalescence dwelt in her mind in after years as a
time of peculiar softness and peace. Her baby-girl throve; Robert had
driven the squire and Henslowe out of his mind, and was all eagerness as
to certain negotiations with a famous naturalist for a lecture at the
village club. At Mile End, as though to put the rector in the wrong,
serious illness had for the time disappeared; and Mrs. Leyburn's mild
chatter, as she gently poked about the house and garden, went out in
Catherine's pony-carriage, inspected Catherine's stores, and hovered
over Catherine's babe, had a constantly cheering effect on the still
languid mother. Like all theorists, especially those at second-hand,
Mrs. Leyburn's maxims had been very much routed by the event. The babe
had ailments she did not understand, or it developed likes and dislikes
she had forgotten existed in babies, and Mrs. Leyburn was nonplussed.
She would sit with it on her lap, anxiously studying its peculiarities.
She was sure it squinted, that its back was weaker than other babies,
that it cried more than hers had ever done. She loved to be plaintive;
it would have seemed to her unladylike to be too cheerful, even over a
first grandchild.

Agnes meanwhile made herself practically useful, as was her way, and she
did almost more than anybody to beguile Catherine's recovery by her
hours of Long Whindale chat. She had no passionate feeling about the
place and the people as Catherine had, but she was easily content, and
she had a good wholesome feminine curiosity as to the courtings and
weddings and buryings of the human beings about her. So she would sit
and chat, working the while with the quickest, neatest of fingers, till
Catherine knew as much about Jenny Tyson's Whinborough lover, and Farmer
Tredall's troubles with his son, and the way in which that odious woman
Molly Redgold bullied her little consumptive husband, as Agnes knew,
which was saying a good deal.

About themselves Agnes was frankness itself.

'Since you went,' she would say with a shrug, 'I keep the coach steady,
perhaps, but Rose drives, and we shall have to go where she takes us. By
the way, Cathie, what have you been doing to her here? She is not a bit
like herself. I don't generally mind bei