"I am dull occasionally myself, or should be, if I had time to think about it. It is hard to be an only child."
I told her I had never found it so.
"But then you have your friend. Has Mr. Halifax any brothers or sisters?"
"None. No relatives living."
"Ah!" a compassionate ejaculation, as she pulled a woodbine spray, and began twisting it with those never-quiet fingers of hers. "You and he seem to be great friends."
"John is a brother, friend, everything in the world to me."
"Is he? He must be very good. Indeed, he looks so," observed Miss March, thoughtfully. "And I believe—at least I have often heard—that good men are rare."
I had no time to enter into that momentous question, when the origin of it himself appeared, breaking through the bushes to join us.
He apologized for so doing, saying Mr. March had sent him.
"You surely do not mean that you come upon compulsion? What an ill compliment to this lovely wood."