“Patience, my dear madam, patience,” said Mr Jabez. “I’ll tell you what it means. Pleasant changes for you; seaside; a nice invalid-carriage; silk attire for little Miss Linny here, and servants to wait upon you. Bless my soul, ma’am!” he cried flourishing his snuff-box, and taking a liberal pinch, “you ought to be proud of your son.”
“I am, Mr Rowle,” she said, plaintively; “but if you would kindly oblige me by not taking so much snuff. It makes—makes me sneeze.”
“My dear madam,” exclaimed the little man, closing his box with a snap, “I beg your pardon. Bad habit—very bad habit, really.”
Linny burst out into a merry, bird-like laugh that made me start with pleasure. It was so fresh and bright, and it was so long since anything but a faint smile had been seen upon her face, that it was like a pleasant augury of happier days to come.
The old man turned round and smiled and nodded at her, evidently enjoying it too; and when, some ten minutes after, he was going up with me to Hallett’s attic, he stopped on the landing and tapped my arm with his snuff-box.
“Grace,” he said, “I am waking up more and more to the fact that I have been an old fool!”
“Indeed! Why?”
“Because I’ve shut myself up all my life, and grown selfish and crusted. I don’t think I’m such a very bad sort of fellow when you get through the bark.”
“I’m sure you are not, Mr Rowle,” I said.
“Humph! Thankye, Grace. Well, you always did seem to like me.”