“For indeed I know
Of no more subtle master under heaven,
Than is the maiden passion for a maid.”
When no other people came in, Min would always, on the evening of my visit, make a rule of turning out her workbox, and arranging its contents over again—“in order,” as she told me, although I had thought it the picture of neatness and tidiness in its original state.
She was in the habit on these occasions of restoring to her mother sundry little articles which she confessed to having purloined during the week. I recollect how there used to be a regular little joke at her expense on the subject of kleptomania.
How well I remember that little workbox, and its arrangements! I could tell you, now, every item of its varied contents,—the perfumed sachet, the ugly little pincushion which she had had since dollhood, the little scraps from her favourite poets, which she had copied out and kept in this sacred repository, never revealing them save to sympathising eyes. How angry she was with me once, for not thinking, with her, that Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” was the “nicest” thing ever written:—what a long time it was afterwards before she would again allow me to inspect her secret treasures and pet things, as she had previously permitted me to do!
This all used to go on while her mother was playing; and then, when the workbox was arranged in apple-pie order, Min herself would go to the piano and sing my favourite ballads, I listening to her from the opposite corner of the room, for she hated having her music turned over by any one.
In addition to these rare opportunities of studying my darling and feeding my love for her, I used to see her at church every Sunday.
From her window, also, when dog Catch and I took our walks abroad, I often had a bright smile from “somebody,” who happened always to be tending her cherished plants just at the moment when I passed by.
Sometimes, too, I met her at Miss Pimpernell’s, or out walking:—thus, in a short time, I learnt to know all her little plans and wishes, and her sentiments about everything.
Her likes and dislikes were my own. It was a strange coincidence, that if Min should express some opinion one day, I found, when we next met, that I seemed to have involuntarily come round to her view; while, if I let fall any casual remark, Min was certain, on some future occasion, to repeat it as if it were her own.
I suppose the coincidence was owing to our mental “rapport,” as the French express it.