Lettice took the offered chair and sat down, still holding the baby; the nurse occupied the other; the young man continued standing.
"I am afraid we have interrupted you," said Lettice, glancing at the book.
"Oh, pray don't think of it! I am in no hurry to be gone. My time," with a suppressed sigh, "is all my own. I will finish my lecture by-and-by."
"Ay, do—do—that's a good gentleman. Do you know, ma'am, he's been the kindest friend, young as he looks, that ever I or my good man met with. You see we lie here out of the way like—it's a big monstrous parish this, and our parson has a world of work to do. So we gets rather overlooked, though, poor man, I believe, he does what he can. I've lived here these ten years, crippled and bed-ridden as you see, but I got along pretty well for some time, for I was a bit of a schollard in my youth; but last winter my eyes took to being bad, and since then I've not been able to read a line. All gets dizzy like. And I was very dull and sore beset that I couldn't even see to read the word of God, and my poor husband, that's the old man as is delving in the garden there, why he has hardly any eyes left in his head. Enough just to potter about like, an' see his way, but he couldn't read a line, and it was never so; and so that blessed young gentleman—law! where is he? Why, I declare he's gone!"
The young gentleman had, indeed, quietly glided out of the cottage as soon as his éloge began.
"That young gentleman—I can say what I like now he is gone—has been so good to us. Many's the half-crown he's given me, and a warm winter coat of his own to my poor rheumatized old man. Oh! he's a blessed one—and then he comes and sits and reads to me of an afternoon for an hour together, because as how one day he called he found me a-cryin, for why, I could no longer read the Holy Word—and he says 'Cheer up, Betty, be of good comfort, I'll read it to you daily'—and when I said 'daily, sir—that'll take up too much of your time, I fear'—he sighed a little, and said he'd nothing particular to do with his time."
"Who is he? Does he belong to this neighborhood?"
"No, miss, he's only been here maybe a half-year or so. He came down on a visit to Mr. Hickman the doctor out there, Brainwood way, and presently he went and lodged at a cottage hard by, to be near Hickman, who's a great name for such complaints as his'n—A-A—I don't know what's the name—but he's very bad, they say, and not able to do any thing in the world. Well, he's the best, kindest, Christian young man, you ever see or I ever see. The power of good he does among the poor—poor young fellow—is not to be told or counted—but he's so melancholy like, and so gentle, and so kind, it makes one a'most cry to look at him; that's the worst of it."
"He looks like a clergyman; I could fancy he was in holy orders. Do you know whether he is so or not?"
"Yes, ma'am, I have heard say that he is a parson, but nobody in these parts has ever seen him in a pulpit; but now it strikes me I've heard that he was to be curate to Mr. Thomas, of Briarwood parish, but he was ta'en bad of his chest or his throat, and never able to speak up like, so it would not do; he can not at present speak in a church, for his voice sounds so low, so low."