And the dear old home-voice answered, “Which it air, old chap.”

“O Joe, you break my heart!  Look angry at me, Joe.  Strike me, Joe.  Tell me of my ingratitude.  Don’t be so good to me!”

For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him.

“Which dear old Pip, old chap,” said Joe, “you and me was ever friends.  And when you’re well enough to go out for a ride — what larks!”

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his back towards me, wiping his eyes.  And as my extreme weakness prevented me from getting up and going to him, I lay there, penitently whispering, “O God bless him!  O God bless this gentle Christian man!”

Joe’s eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but, I was holding his hand, and we both felt happy.

“How long, dear Joe?”

“Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dear old chap?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“It’s the end of May, Pip.  To-morrow is the first of June.”

“And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?”

“Pretty nigh, old chap.  For, as I says to Biddy when the news of your being ill were brought by letter, which it were brought by the post and being formerly single he is now married though underpaid for a deal of walking and shoe-leather, but wealth were not a object on his part, and marriage were the great wish of his hart—­”

“It is so delightful to hear you, Joe!  But I interrupt you in what you said to Biddy.”

“Which it were,” said Joe, “that how you might be amongst strangers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, a wisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble.  And Biddy, her word were, ‘Go to him, without loss of time.’  That,” said Joe, summing up with his judicial air, “were the word of Biddy.  ’Go to him,’ Biddy say, ‘without loss of time.’  In short, I shouldn’t greatly deceive you,” Joe added, after a little grave reflection, “if I represented to you that the word of that young woman were, ‘without a minute’s loss of time.’”

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for it or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders.  So, I kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note to Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write.  As I lay in bed looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see the pride with which he set about his letter.  My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into the sittingroom, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day.  At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and