'Thistles?'
'I thought you cared for thistles; for Miss May showed me one at Coombe; but it was not like what they are here—the spikes pointing out and pointing in along the edges of the leaves, and the scales lapping over so wonderfully in the bud.'
'Picciola!' said the Doctor to himself; and aloud, 'Then you have time to enjoy them?'
'When we are at work at a distance, dinner is brought out, and there is an hour and a half of rest; and on Sunday we may walk about the yards. You should have seen one of our gang, when I got him to look at the chevaux de frise round a bud, how he owned it was a regular patent invention; it just answered to Paley's illustration.'
'What, the watch?' said the Doctor, seeing that the argument had been far from trite to his young friend. 'So you read Paley?'
'I read all such books as I could get up there,' he answered; 'they gave one something to think about.'
'Have you no time for reading here?'
'Oh, no! I am too sleepy to read except on school days and Sundays,' he said, as if this were a great achievement.
'And your acquaintance—is he a reader of Paley too?'
'I believe the chaplain set him on it. He is a clerk, like me, and not much older. He is a regular Londoner, and can hardly stand the work; but he won't give in if he can help it, or we might not be together.'