"The dear old Bishops will do so," the doctor said, "your friend at Wells amongst them."
"Well," Joyce said, "he is sure to do what he does because he thinks it is right, not because other people do it."
The doctor laughed again; evidently he was not so sure of the Bishop. Then, with a pleasant smile to Charlotte, the doctor went away, just turning back for a moment to say, "I saw your old friend, Mrs. Hannah More's doctor, in consultation this morning, and he incidentally mentioned that she was failing rather visibly. Have you seen her of late?"
"I am going there this afternoon," Joyce said. "I want so much to see her."
"I would not delay," the doctor said, significantly, and then he was gone.
After the first greeting. Piers dragged Joyce off to his den, to show her a beautiful specimen of quartz, of which he had possessed himself the day before for a mere trifle.
And then he had diagrams to show her, which he had drawn, of several crystals, as seen through the microscope; and then he divulged the doctor's plan, that he should prepare a good many of such diagrams for him to use at a lecture he was to give in the Bristol Museum, some evening in the course of the coming winter.
I do not think there is any quality more attractive than that, which Joyce possessed in a remarkable degree, of throwing herself—not superficially, as Gratian did, but really and heartily—into the interests of other people.
