“This,” returned Mr. Turveydrop, “is as it should be.  My children, my home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours.  I will never leave you; nothing but death shall part us.  My dear son, you contemplate an absence of a week, I think?”

“A week, dear father.  We shall return home this day week.”

“My dear child,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “let me, even under the present exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality.  It is highly important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all neglected, are apt to take offence.”

“This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner.”

“Good!” said Mr. Turveydrop.  “You will find fires, my dear Caroline, in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment.  Yes, yes, Prince!” anticipating some self-denying objection on his son’s part with a great air.  “You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my apartment.  Now, bless ye!”

They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know.  Ada and my guardian were in the same condition when we came to talk it over.  But before we drove away too, I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr. Jellyby.  He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice.  I was so sure of his meaning that I said, quite flurried, “You are very welcome, sir.  Pray don’t mention it!”

“I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian,” said I when we three were on our road home.

“I hope it is, little woman.  Patience.  We shall see.”

“Is the wind in the east to-day?” I ventured to ask him.

He laughed heartily and answered, “No.”

“But it must have been this morning, I think,” said I.

He answered “No” again, and this time my dear girl confidently answered “No” too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring.  “Much you know of east winds, my ugly darling,” said I, kissing her in my admiration—­I couldn’t help it.

Well!  It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a long time ago.  I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it gives me so much pleasure.  They said there could be no east wind where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there was sunshine and summer air.

CHAPTER XXXI

Nurse and Patient

I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley’s shoulder and see how she was getting on with her copy-book.  Writing was a trying business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners like a saddle-donkey.  It was very odd to see what old letters Charley’s young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and round.  Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.