bed, to see
if the little arm was waving up and down, as was his accustomed habit
when sleepless from pain.

Libbie had a good deal of sewing to do at home that winter, and whenever
it was not so cold as to benumb her fingers, she took it upstairs, in
order to watch the little lad in her few odd moments of pause. On his
better days he could sit up enough to peep out of his window, and she
found he liked to look at her. Presently she ventured to nod to him
across the court; and his faint smile, and ready nod back again, showed
that this gave him pleasure. I think she would have been encouraged by
this smile to have proceeded to a speaking acquaintance, if it had not
been for his terrible mother, to whom it seemed to be irritation enough
to know that Libbie was a lodger at the Dixons' for her to talk at her
whenever they encountered each other, and to live evidently in wait for
some good opportunity of abuse.

With her constant interest in him, Libbie soon discovered his great want
of an object on which to occupy his thoughts, and which might distract
his attention, when alone through the long day, from the pain he endured.
He was very fond of flowers. It was November when she had first removed
to her lodgings, but it had been very mild weather, and a few flowers
yet lingered in the gardens, which the country people gathered into
nosegays, and brought on market-days into Manchester. His mother had
brought him a bunch of Michaelmas daisies the very day Libbie had become
a neighbour, and she watched their history. He put them first in an old
teapot, of which the spout was broken off and the lid lost; and he daily
replenished the teapot from the jug of water his mother left near him to
quench his feverish thirst. By-and-by, one or two of the constellation
of lilac stars faded, and then the time he had hitherto spent in
admiring, almost caressing them, was devoted to cutting off those
flowers whose decay marred the beauty of the nosegay. It took him half
the morning, with his feeble, languid motions, and his cumbrous old
scissors, to trim up his diminished darlings. Then at last he seemed to
think he had better preserve the few that remained by drying them; so
they were carefully put between the leaves of the old Bible; and then,
whenever a better day came, when he had strength enough to lift the
ponderous book, he used to open the pages to look at his flower friends.
In winter he could have no more living flowers to tend.