'Purchased,' he replied, smilingly.
But I could see that he advanced his objections hesitatingly and doubtfully; and I felt that he would be ready enough to acknowledge that we were right, whenever we could prove that we were; and we did not despair of that in time. Moreover, he had now no fear of our attempting to disturb the faith of his flock.
We came off a great deal better with Mr Wyatt than with the district visitors at the cottages; though even they recognised the wisdom of non-interference, and kept aloof, paying their weekly visits in the afternoons when we had retired. Nevertheless, we quite understood why we were always finding certain tracts of a very decided tendency placed in our way, had old Sally Dent not informed us that we were regarded as not being quite 'safe.' We just worked on, and did not intrude ourselves upon the residents at the cottages; not even knowing them by sight, and making a détour on our way to church on Sundays, for the purpose of avoiding them.
CHAPTER XXII.—MORE WEAK THAN WICKED.
Robert Wentworth took good care that our time should not hang heavily upon our hands when we were at home, urging us to work, and keeping us well supplied with books, such as he had gradually got me into the habit of reading—books which required some little mental exercise for their proper appreciation. Moreover, he demanded notes, a paraphrase, or criticism, upon all we read; being very exacting about our getting thoroughly to the root of the subject treated upon, and having no mercy upon what he termed a slovenly habit of thinking.
We were much amused at the tests he gave us, and the impossibility of throwing dust in his eyes. If Lilian wrote my thoughts upon a subject, and I hers, he detected which belonged to which with an unerring readiness which proved that our minds were as open books to him. The very difference in his treatment of us when he found us flagging, bantering—not to say taunting—me, and encouraging Lilian, I now think was a proof that he knew the kind of spur we each needed. And although I believed that he was doing all this for Lilian's sake, I was none the less grateful for the benefit it was to me. At his suggestion, Lilian was doing a little French with me, for which she gave me German; whilst our sketch-books were not allowed to lie entirely unused. All this, with what dear Mrs Tipper called our long walks—she did not as yet know how our mornings were employed—sent us healthily tired each night to bed.
Robert Wentworth came down twice and sometimes three times during the week; and after we had given him a résumé of the work we had done in the interval, we finished the evenings with music and singing. Lilian's voice was not her least charm. Then would come some triumph of dear Mrs Tipper's skill in the way of little appetising dainties for our substantial tea, and afterwards Lilian and I went along the lanes with him as far as the stile, which separated them from the fields, in the summer moonlight, bidding him goodnight there.
It was a pleasant life, though at the time I naturally could not think it the pleasantest; it was merely the pleasant peaceful prelude—the, so to speak, preparation for the fuller life to come. But best of all, Lilian was beginning to enter into it with real enjoyment, less as a life lived from duty than from love.
'It is what I never hoped for—to see my darling get over it so well as this!' confided dear Mrs Tipper to me.
'They cannot at anyrate call her broken-hearted at present,' was my cheerful rejoinder.