I hurried down into the street to tell Harold of my old friend’s wish to see them, and he followed me at once, with that manner which was not courtesy, because, without being polished, it was so much more.  Dora was much displeased, being ardent on the kite’s tail, and followed with sullen looks, while Harold had to stoop low to get into the room, and brushed the low ceiling with his curly hair as he stood upright, Miss Woolmer gazing up to the very top of him.  I think she was rather disappointed that he had not taken more after his father; and she told him that he was like his uncle Lewthwayte, looking keenly to see whether he shrunk from the comparison to a man who had died a felon’s death; but he merely answered, “So I have been told.”

Then she asked for his mother, and he briefly replied that she was well and in New Zealand.  There was an attempt at noticing Dora, to which she responded like the wild opossum that she was, and her fidgeting carried the day.  Harold only made answer to one or two more observations, and then could not but take leave, promising on the entreaty of the old lady, to come and see her again.  I outstayed them, being curious to hear her opinion.

“A superb being,” she said, with a long breath; “there’s the easy strength of a Greek demi-god in every tread.”

“He seems to me more like Thor in Nifelheim,” I said, “being, no doubt, half a Viking to begin with.”

“They are all the same, as people tell us now,” she said, smiling.  “Any way, he looks as if he was a waif from the heroic age.  But, my dear, did not I hear him call you Lucy?”

“They generally do.”

“I would not let them.  Cling to your auntship; it explains your being with them.  A grand creature!  I feel like the people who had had a visit from the gods of old.”

“And you understand how impossible it would be to run away,” I said.

She smiled, but added, “Lucy, my dear, that looked very like a wedding-ring!”

I could not think it possible.  Why, he was scarcely five-and-twenty!  And yet the suggestion haunted me, whenever my eyes fell on his countenance in repose, and noted the habitual sadness of expression which certainly did not match with the fine open face that seemed fitted to express the joy of strength.  It came on me too when, at the lodge, a child who had been left alone too long and had fallen into an unmitigated agony of screaming, Harry had actually, instead of fleeing from the sound, gone in, taken the screamer in his arms, and so hushed and pacified it, that on the mother’s return she found it at perfect rest.

“One would think the gentleman was a father himself, ma’am,” she had said to me; and thereupon Harold had coloured, and turned hastily aside, so that the woman fancied she had offended him and apologised, so that he had been forced to look back again and say, “Never mind,” and “No harm done,” with a half laugh, which, as it now struck me, had a ring of pain in it, and was not merely the laugh of a shy young man under an impossible imputation.  True, I knew he was not a religious man, but to believe actual ill of him seemed to me impossible.