“Why does that old man follow us about in that way?  It is excessively impertinent of him, I think.”

“Oh, don’t call old Thomas impertinent.  He is so good and kind, he is like a father to me.  I remember sitting on his knee many and many a time when I was a child, whilst he told me stories out of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’  He taught me to suck up milk through a straw.  Mamma was very fond of him, too.  He used to sit with us always in the evenings when papa was away at market, for mamma was rather afraid of having no man in the house, and used to beg old Thomas to stay; and he would take me on his knee, and listen just as attentively as I did while mamma read aloud.”

“You don’t mean to say you have sat upon that old fellow’s knee?”

“Oh, yes! many and many a time.”

Mr. Bellingham looked graver than he had done while witnessing Ruth’s passionate emotion in her mother’s room.  But he lost his sense of indignity in admiration of his companion as she wandered among the flowers, seeking for favourite bushes or plants, to which some history or remembrance was attached.  She wound in and out in natural, graceful, wavy lines between the luxuriant and overgrown shrubs, which were fragrant with a leafy smell of spring growth; she went on, careless of watching eyes, indeed unconscious, for the time, of their existence.  Once she stopped to take hold of a spray of jessamine, and softly kiss it; it had been her mother’s favourite flower.

Old Thomas was standing by the horse-mount, and was also an observer of all her goings-on.  But, while Mr. Bellingham’s feeling was that of passionate admiration mingled with a selfish kind of love, the old man gazed with tender anxiety, and his lips moved in words of blessing—­

“She’s a pretty creature, with a glint of her mother about her; and she’s the same kind lass as ever.  Not a bit set up with yon fine manty-maker’s shop she’s in.  I misdoubt that young fellow though, for all she called him a real gentleman, and checked me when I asked if he was her sweetheart.  If his are not sweetheart’s looks, I’ve forgotten all my young days.  Here! they’re going, I suppose.  Look! he wants her to go without a word to the old man; but she is none so changed as that, I reckon.”

Not Ruth, indeed!  She never perceived the dissatisfied expression of Mr. Bellingham’s countenance, visible to the old man’s keen eye; but came running up to Thomas to send her love to his wife, and to shake him many times by the hand.

“Tell Mary I’ll make her such a fine gown, as soon as ever I set up for myself; it shall be all in the fashion, big gigot sleeves, that she shall not know herself in them!  Mind you tell her that, Thomas, will you?”

“Ay, that I will, lass; and I reckon she’ll be pleased to hear thou hast not forgotten thy old merry ways.  The Lord bless thee—­the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon thee.”