“Does your grandmother ever go out, Rosamund?”

Margaret prevented the girl’s reply, by saying—­“My dear young lady, I am an old woman, and very infirm—­Rosamund takes me a few paces beyond the door sometimes—­but I walk very badly—­I love best to sit in our little arbor when the sun shines—­I can yet feel it warm and cheerful—­and, if I lose the beauties of the season, I shall be very happy if you and Rosamund can take delight in this fine summer evening.”

“I shall want to rob you of Rosamund’s company now and then, if we like one another.  I had hoped to have seen you, madam, at our house.  I don’t know whether we could not make room for you to come and live with us—­what say you to it?  Allan would be proud to tend you, I am sure; and Rosamund and I should be nice company.”

Margaret was all unused to such kindnesses, and wept—­Margaret had a great spirit—­yet she was not above accepting an obligation from a worthy person—­there was a delicacy in Miss Clare’s manner—­she could have no interest but pure goodness, to induce her to make the offer—­at length the old lady spake from a full heart.

“Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress—­it gave us shelter when we had no home—­we have praised God in it—­and, while life remains, I think I shall never part from it—­Rosamund does everything for me”—­

“And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;”—­and then Rosamund fell a-crying.

“You are a good girl, Rosamund; and if you do but find friends when I am dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live—­but God bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer.”

Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk.  The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she never beheld so lovely a creature.

They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together; they rambled over all Rosamund’s favorite haunts—­through many a sunny field—­by secret glade or wood-walk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved Clare.

Who now so happy as Rosamund?  She had oft-times heard Allan speak with great tenderness of his sister—­she was now rambling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the “vaunted sister” of her friend, her beloved Clare.

Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some chaste endearment.  Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening before her—­she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence.

Rosamund was too happy to talk much—­but Elinor was delighted with her when she did talk:—­the girl’s remarks were suggested most of them by the passing scene—­and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of present impulse;—­her conversation did not consist in a comparison of vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep—­it had all the freshness of young sensation in it.