, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were
no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to
indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did
not her nurse prepare what was selected! How she watched her as she
partook of it!

Nourishment brought strength. She could sit up. Then she longed to
breathe the fresh air, to revisit her flowers, to see how the fruit had
ripened. Her uncle, always liberal, had bought a garden-chair for her
express use. He carried her down in his own arms, and placed her in it
himself, and William Farren was there to wheel her round the walks, to
show her what he had done amongst her plants, to take her directions for
further work.

William and she found plenty to talk about. They had a dozen topics in
common--interesting to them, unimportant to the rest of the world. They
took a similar interest in animals, birds, insects, and plants; they
held similar doctrines about humanity to the lower creation, and had a
similar turn for minute observation on points of natural history. The
nest and proceedings of some ground-bees, which had burrowed in the turf
under an old cherry-tree, was one subject of interest; the haunts of
certain hedge-sparrows, and the welfare of certain pearly eggs and
callow fledglings, another.

Had _Chambers's Journal_ existed in those days, it would certainly have
formed Miss Helstone's and Farren's favourite periodical. She would have
subscribed for it, and to him each number would duly have been lent;
both would have put implicit faith and found great savour in its
marvellous anecdotes of animal sagacity.

This is a digression, but it suffices to explain why Caroline would have
no other hand than William's to guide her chair, and why his society and
conversation sufficed to give interest to her garden-airings.

Mrs. Pryor, walking near, wondered how her daughter could be so much at
ease with a "man of the people." _She_ found it impossible to speak to
him otherwise than stiffly. She felt as if a great gulf lay between her
caste and his, and that to cross it or meet him half-way would be to
degrade herself. She gently asked Caroline, "Are you not afraid, my
dear, to converse with that person so unreservedly? He may presume, and
become troublesomely garrulous."

"William presume, mamma? You don't know him. He never presumes. He is
altogether too proud and sensitive to do so. William has very fine
feelings."