carry weights."

"No, but you can write."

"Very scurvily, and I cannot cypher."

For Stead, like everyone else at Elmwood, kept his accounts by tally and
in his head, and the mysteries of the nine Arabic figures were perfectly
unknown to him. However, Emlyn stuck to the hope, and he was so far
inspired by it that he ceased to insist on giving up the pledges of the
betrothal, and he lay on the settle in quiet enjoyment of Emlyn's castle
building, as she sat on a stool by his side, his hand on her shoulder,
somewhat as it was wont to lie on Growler's head. And in spite of
Master Willis's opinion, he rode home to the gulley a new man, assuring
Patience, on the donkey by his side, that there was more staunchness
and kindness in little Emlyn than ever they had thought for. Even the
ferryman who put them over the river declared that the doctor must
have done Master Kenton a power of good, and Stead smiled and did not
contradict him.

Stead actually consulted Mr. Woodley how to learn cyphering beyond what
Ben had acquired at school; and the minister lent him a treatise, over
which he pored with a board and a burnt stick for many an hour when he
was out on the common with the cattle, or on the darkening evenings in
the hut. Ben saw his way into those puzzles with no more difficulty than
whetted his appetite, worked out sum after sum, and explained them
to his brother, to the admiration of both his elders, till frowns of
despair and long sighs from Stead brought Patience to declare he was
mazing himself, and insist on putting out the light.

Stead had more time for his studies than he could wish, for the cold
of winter soon affected the injured lungs; and, moreover, the being no
longer able to move about rapidly caused the damp and cold of the
ravine to produce rheumatism and attendant ills, of which, in his former
healthy, out-of-door life, he had been utterly ignorant, and he had to
spend many an hour breathless, or racked with pain in the poor little
hovel, sometimes trying to give his mind to the abstruse mysteries of
multiplication of money, but generally in vain, and at others whiling
away the time with his books, for though there were only seven of them,
including Bible and Prayer-book, a very little reading could be the text
of so much musing, that these few perfectly sufficed him. And then he
was the nurse of any orphaned lamb or sick chicken that Patience was
anxious about, and his care certainly saved many of t