ist me in
the task. But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days,
his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of
perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one
of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind. To this
mind of the heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of
the truth shot straight.

He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours,
of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been
accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor's Walk at Canterbury. But
matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his spare time
(and got up earlier to make it more) to these perambulations. If he had
never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance,
the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor
pulled it out of his pocket, and began. When the Doctor and I were
engaged, he now fell into the custom of walking up and down with Mrs.
Strong, and helping her to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the
beds. I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet
interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their
breasts; each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and
he became what no one else could be--a link between them.

When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up and
down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard words in the
Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge watering-pots after Annie;
kneeling down, in very paws of gloves, at patient microscopic work among
the little leaves; expressing as no philosopher could have expressed,
in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her friend; showering
sympathy, trustfulness, and affection, out of every hole in the
watering-pot; when I think of him never wandering in that better mind
of his to which unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the
unfortunate King Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful
service, never diverted from his knowledge that there was something
wrong, or from his wish to set it right--I really feel almost ashamed
of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the
utmost I have done with mine.

'Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!' my aunt would proudly
remark, when we conversed about it. 'Dick will distinguish himself yet!'

I must refe