Then she went upstairs.  On the first floor the doors of the two rooms stood open, and the rooms were bare.  The lodgers who had occupied this part of the house had recently left; a card was again hanging in the window of Bessie’s parlour.  Jane passed up the succeeding flight and entered the chamber which looked out upon Hanover Street.  The truckle-bed on which her grandfather slept had been arranged for the day some two hours ago; Snowdon rose at six, and everything was orderly in the room when Jane came to prepare breakfast an hour later.  At present the old man was sitting by the open window, smoking a pipe.  He spoke a few words with reference to the Byasses, then seemed to resume a train of thought, and for a long time there was unbroken silence.  Jane seated herself at a table, on which were a few books and writing materials.  She began to copy something, using the pen with difficulty, and taking extreme pains.  Occasionally her eyes wandered, and once they rested upon her grandfather’s face for several minutes.  But for the cry of a milkman or a paper-boy in the street, no sound broke the quietness of the summer morning.  The blessed sunshine, so rarely shed from a London sky—­sunshine, the source of all solace to mind and body—­ reigned gloriously in heaven and on earth.

When more than an hour had passed, Snowdon came and sat down beside the girl.  Without speaking she showed him what she had written.  He nodded approvingly.

‘Shall I say it to you, grandfather?’

‘Yes.’

Jane collected her thoughts, then began to repeat the parable of the Samaritan.  From the first words it was evident that she frequently thus delivered passages committed to memory; evident, too, that instruction and a natural good sense guarded her against the gabbling method of recitation.  When she had finished Snowdon spoke with her for awhile on the subject of the story.  In all he said there was the earnestness of deep personal feeling.  His theme was the virtue of Compassion; he appeared to rate it above all other forms of moral goodness, to regard it as the saving principle of human life.

’If only we had pity on one another, all the worst things we suffer from in this world would be at an end.  It’s because men’s hearts are hard that life is so full of misery.  If we could only learn to be kind and gentle and forgiving—­never mind anything else.  We act as if we were all each other’s enemies; we can’t be merciful, because we expect no mercy; we struggle to get as much as we can for ourselves and care nothing for others.  Think about it; never let it go out of your mind.  Perhaps some day it’ll help you in your own life.’

Then there was silence again.  Snowdon went back to his scat by the window and relit his pipe; to muse in the sunshine seemed sufficient occupation for him.  Jane opened another book and read to herself.

In the afternoon they went out together.  The old man had grown more talkative.  He passed cheerfully from subject to subject, now telling a story of his experiences abroad, now reviving recollections of London as he had known it sixty years ago.  Jane listened with quiet interest.  She did not say much herself, and when she did speak it was with a noticeable effort to overcome her habit of diffidence.  She was happy, but her nature had yet to develop itself under these strangely novel conditions.