Had it been herself, Honor could not have been more astounded.
‘My child! impossible! Why, he might be your father! Is it that you want a home, Lucy? Can you not stay with me?’
‘I can and I will for the present, Sweetest Honey,’ said Cilly, caressingly drawing her arm round her. ‘I want to have been good and happy with you; but indeed, indeed I can’t help his being more to me!’
‘He is a very excellent man,’ began bewildered Honor; ‘but I cannot understand—’
‘His oddity? That’s the very thing which makes him my own, and nobody else’s, Mr. Pendy! Listen, Honor. Sit down, you don’t half know him, nor did I know my own heart till now. He came to us, you know, when my father’s health began to break after my mother’s death. He was quite young, only a deacon; he lived in our house, and he was, with all his dear clumsiness, a daughter to my father, a nurse to us. I could tell you of such beautiful awkward tendernesses! How he used to help me with my sums—and tie Owen’s shoes, and mince his dinner for him—and spare my father all that was possible! I am sure you know how we grieved after him.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And now I know that it was he that I cared for at Wrapworth. With him I never was wild and naughty as I was with others, though I did not know—oh! Honor, if I had but known—that he always cared for the horrid little thing I was, I could not have gone on so; but he was too good and wise, even while he did love me, to think of this, till I had been tamed and come back to you! I am sure I can’t be so naughty now, since he has thought of me!’
‘Lucy, dearest, I am glad to see you so happy, but it is very strange to me. It is such a sudden change,’ said Honor.
‘No change! I never cared for any one half as much!’
‘Lucy!’ confounded at her apparent oblivion.