Sarah answered this long speech of John's by saying that she was ready to do anything he thought right to be done; and that if he did not care to remember her cousin's former perverseness, it wasn't for her to put him in mind of it. And then she cried again a little, but her tears were not bitter ones; and she went over again the lesson she had so recently learnt by heart—
"Oh, John, I love you; I love you; I do love you, and only you."
And then, when these raptures were calmed down a little, they began to plan what they should do for Walter's comfort, and for poor motherless Helen's also. And that was how "the sweetest, darlingest room" in the whole house was fixed upon for Helen's room.
And the very next day—cold as it was—Sarah and John went over to Trotbury in the passenger van which passed through the village every morning, to make a call at the paperhanger's, to select a new paper for the walls. Of course John knew nothing about this sort of thing, so he left Sarah to choose, and was quite prepared to approve her taste, wherever it might lead her. And it led her to admire a most wonderful pattern, composed of trellis-work on a light ground, interwoven with climbing, twisting foliage, bearing the most impossible flowers and luscious fruits, with birds of paradise and many other either imaginable or unimaginable specimens of the animal creation nestling in, or soaring above, or disporting below the branches.
After this being settled to their mutual satisfaction, the pair proceeded to the upholsterer's and selected what furniture they had previously decided on as needful for the rooms especially set apart for the expected guests. Then they returned home, tired with their unwonted exertions, but satisfied with their day's exploit.
And then, as I have said, the month following had been occupied by them and Jane and the house-boy, with the aid of painters and paperhangers and a charwoman or two, in so furbishing up the old house (in those especial apartments, at any rate) that a report was spread abroad that a member of Parliament, at the very least, was expected to pay a long visit to Tincroft House, if not to take it off John's hands entirely.
Under all these circumstances, it is no wonder that Tincroft had to discontinue his researches into Chinese Cosmogony, or whatever else had previously bewildered his brain; nor that Sarah had, for the time, been roused into such unwonted activity of mind and body that the lines of languor and dissatisfaction which had for so long a time been half-spoiling her pretty face, were fast disappearing, so that every now and then John caught himself in a confused contemplation of that same yet altered face, in amazement, and thinking, in an odd kind of way, of the old days at High Beech so many years ago, when, without intending it, he ventured so near the maelstrom.
Of course, in all this preposterous activity, with its still inure preposterous origin and design, John was doing what you and I, reader, supposing we are extremely worldly-wise and knowing, should never have thought of doing; and we are at liberty, of course, to smile at John's simplicity, in suffering his good-nature to outrun his discretion. But then John was simple have we not said so a score of times? But then again, oh reader, there is a simplicity that is worth more than your worldly wisdom and mine put together—an uncalculating simplicity, a Christian simplicity, a wonder-working simplicity. And John's simplicity was of this nature.
It worked wonders. It always had worked wonders. It had worked wonders in the genuine respect for him which it had created and sustained in the thoughts and feelings of those who were always ashamed after having been betrayed occasionally into making an innocent joke at his expense. It had worked wonders in men with whom he had dealings—hard-headed men and not over-scrupulous perhaps, who would have prided themselves in getting the upper-hand and taking advantage of clever fellows with all their wits about them, but who would have felt many extra twinges of conscience had they at any time taken advantage, and made a gain, of John's simplicity.
It had wrought wonders with the poor children of the village, uncouth and home-neglected as they were, whom he taught from Sunday to Sunday in a large class in the Sunday school, and who looked upon him as alike a mine of erudition (though they wouldn't have used those express words) and a model of human kindness and forbearance. For though I have said little about John Tincroft from a theological and "professingly Christian" point of view, it must be once for all understood that it is not because I have nothing to say, but that this has not been quite the place in which to make a parade of it; it is not, out of place, however, to say that he was "a teacher of babes" in the school of Christ.