He would have over-tasked himself in his weakness much more, if it had not been for his lovingness to Alfred.  To please Alfred was always his first thought; and even if a difficult sum were just on the point of proving itself, he would leave off at the first moment of seeing Alfred look as if he wanted to be read to, and would miss all his calculations, to answer some question—­who was going down the village, or what that noise could be.

Alfred tried to be considerate, and was sorry when he saw by a furrow on Paul’s brow that he was trying to win up again all that some trifling saying had made him lose.  But Alfred was not scholar enough to perceive the teasing of such interruptions, and even had he been aware of it, he was not in a state when he could lie quite still long together without disturbing any one; he could amuse himself much less than formerly, and often had most distressing restless fits, when one or other of them had to give him their whole attention; and it was all his most earnest efforts could do to keep from the old habit of fretfulness and murmuring.  And he grieved so much over the least want of temper, and begged pardon so earnestly for the least impatient word—­even if there had been real provocation for it—­that it was a change indeed since the time when he thought grumbling and complaint his privilege and relief.  Nothing helped him more than Paul’s reading Psalms to him—­the 121st was his favourite—­or saying over hymns to him in that very sweet voice so full of meaning.  Sometimes Ellen and Paul would sing together, as she sat at her work, and it almost always soothed him to hear the Psalm tunes, that were like an echo from the church, about which he had cared so little when he had been able to go there in health and strength, but for which he now had such a longing!  He came to be so used to depend on their singing the Evening Hymn to him, that one of the times when it was most hard for him to be patient, was one cold evening, when Ellen was so hoarse that she could not speak, and an unlucky draught in from the shop door had so knit Paul up again, that he was lying in his bed, much nearer screaming than singing.

Most of all, however, was Alfred helped by Mr. Cope’s visits, and the looking forward to the promised Feast, with more earnestness as the time drew on, and he felt his own weakness more longing for the support and blessing of uniting his suffering with that of his Lord.  ‘In all our afflictions He was afflicted,’ was a sound that came most cheeringly to him, and seemed to give him greater strength and good-will to bear his load of weakness.

There was a book which young Mrs. Selby had given his mother, which was often lying on his bed, and had marks in it at all the favourite places.  Some he liked to look at himself, some for Paul to read to him.  They were such sentences as these: 

’My son, I descended from Heaven for thy salvation; I took upon Me thy miseries; not necessity, but charity, drawing Me thereto, that thou thyself mightest learn patience, and bear temporal miseries without grudging.’