"It's quite warm," I said, looking up at the sunshine, and shivering.
"Please go in."
"If you'll come too."
He nodded, then put his arm round mine, and helped me in, as if he had been a big elder brother, and I a little ailing child. Well nursed and carefully guarded as I had always been, it was the first time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing, tenderness. A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness, or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest found in men. John Halifax had it more than any one, woman or man, that I ever knew.
"I'm glad you're better," he said, and said no more. But one look of his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other people.
"And how have you been, John? How do you like the tan-yard? Tell me frankly."
He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily, "Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread. It's a grand thing for me not to have been hungry for nearly thirty days."
"Poor John!" I put my hand on his wrist—his strong, brawny wrist. Perhaps the contrast involuntarily struck us both with the truth—good for both to learn—that Heaven's ways are not so unequal as we sometimes fancy they seem.
"I have so often wanted to see you, John. Couldn't you come in now?"
He shook his head, and pointed to the cart. That minute, through the open hall-door, I perceived Jael sauntering leisurely home from market.