He came in continually after this; and little things each day, and Harold’s talk, made the two acquainted and like boys together; but it was not till Christmas Day that they felt like knowing each other.
It was the first time Paul felt himself able to be of any use, for he was to be left in charge of Alfred, while Mrs. King and both her other children went to church. Paul was sadly crippled still, and every frost filled his bones with acute pain, and bent him like an old man, so that he was still a long way from getting down-stairs, but he could make a shift to get about the room, and he looked greatly pleased when Alfred declared that he should want nobody else to stay with him in the morning.
Very glad he was that his mother would not be kept from Ellen’s first Holy Communion. Owing to the Curate not being a priest, the Feast had not been celebrated since Michaelmas; but a clergyman had come to help Mr. Cope, that the parish might not be deprived of the Festival on such a day as Christmas.
Harold, though in a much better mood than at the Confirmation time, was not as much concerned to miss it as perhaps he ought to have been. Thought had not come to him yet, and his head was full of the dinner with the servants at the Grange. It was sad that he and Ellen should alone be able to go to it; but it would be famous for all that! Ay, and so were the young postman’s Christmas-boxes!
So Paul and Alfred were left together, and held their tongues for full five minutes, because both felt so odd. Then Alfred said something about reading the Service, and Paul offered to read it to him.
Paul had not only been very well taught, but had a certain gift, such as not many people have, for reading aloud well. Alfred listened to those Psalms and Lessons as if they had quite a new meaning in them, for the right sound and stress on the right words made them sound quite like another thing; and so Alfred said when he left off.
‘I’m sure they do to me,’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t know much about “good-will to men” last Christmas.’
‘You’ve not had overmuch good-will from them, neither,’ said Alfred, ‘since you came out.’
‘What! not since I’ve been at Friarswood?’ exclaimed Paul. ‘Why, I used to think all that was only something in a book.’
‘All what?’ asked Alfred.