but Bob never wanted
to get back to his. And he was very good-natured about getting into the
water and wading and grubbing for things; indeed, I think he got to like
it.

At first Mr. Wood had been rather afraid of trusting Charlie with him.
He thought Bob might play tricks with the boat, even though he knew how
to manage her, when there was only one helpless boy with him. But Mrs.
Furniss said, "Nay! Our Bob's a bad 'un, but he's not one of that sort,
he'll not plague them that's afflicted." And she was quite right; for
though his father said he could be trusted with nothing else, we found
he could be trusted with Cripple Charlie.

It was two days before the summer holidays came to an end that Charlie
asked me to come down to the farm and help him to put away his fern
collection and a lot of other things into the places that he had
arranged for them in his room; for now that the school-room was wanted
again, he could not leave his papers and boxes about there. Charlie
lived at the farm altogether now. He was better there than on the moors,
so he boarded there and went home for visits. The room Mrs. Wood had
given him was the one where the old miser had slept. In a memorandum
left with his will it appeared that he had expressed a wish that the
furniture of that room should not be altered, which was how they knew it
was his. So Mrs. Wood had kept the curious old oak bed (the back of
which was fastened into the wall), and an old oak press, with a great
number of drawers with brass handles to them, and all the queer
furniture that she found there, just as it was. Even the brass
warming-pan was only rubbed and put back in its place, and the big
bellows were duly hung up by the small fire-place. But everything was so
polished up and cleaned, the walls re-papered with a soft grey-green
paper spangled with dog-daisies, and the room so brightened up with
fresh blinds and bedclothes, and a bit of bright carpet, that it did
not look in the least dismal, and Charlie was very proud and very fond
of it. It had two windows, one where the beehive was, and one very sunny
one, where he had a balm of Gilead that Isaac's wife gave him, and his
old medicine-bottles full of cuttings on the upper ledge. The old women
used to send him "slippings" off their fairy roses and myrtles and
fuchsias, and they rooted very well in that window, there was so much
sun.

Charlie had only just begun a fern collection, and I had saved my
pocket-money (I