"I don't know. He certainly had no home for it. He never alluded to it. I believe he was not with his wife when she died."
"Poor wife!" said Meg, thinking of that unhappy wife who had suffered so much, who had died so neglected and uncared for. "Is it not strange," she continued after a pause, "that it should have been my guardian's son who was the friend for whom you almost beggared yourself?"
"And for having done which, do you remember, you stroked my head?" he replied smilingly.
She answered him with a blush only.
Sometimes he spoke to her as to a comrade out of the fund of his large experience and knowledge. His interest in the working classes appealed to her, and life seemed to grow wider from the solicitude that he brought into it for others. There grew every day in her heart a reliance, a sort of wide faith in him, as if all he said and thought must be right.
The winter passed and the spring came round; the sap rose in the earth and the pulses of nature quickened.
They met oftener. Sometimes they wandered forth to meet each other in the dewy mornings, when the fields shone like gossamer. There, in the woods, where the birds wearied themselves for listeners, they came on the scene. Meg would bid him forget his politics, his ink-bottle, in honor of all the loveliness around.
"Look at this clump of daffodils," she said one morning when a mood of mirthful raillery was upon her, pointing to the silly flowers. "Don't they look like Hebes drooping their gold cups? Ah! everything is young and merry, sir, but your old politics—your dull old politics."
Then he vowed he would never talk politics to her again, upon which she coaxed and played the little siren until he relented, complaining that she honeycombed his will by her cajoleries.
An exaltation stirred Meg's spirit—the girl who had been silent and reserved was full of innocent gayety; and still that companionship with one who had brought happiness to her childhood continued simple, familiar, and charming, as it might be between dearest friends.