But she had been of aid and use in saving him!  She was not quite a valueless person; sweet, too, was the thought that he consulted her, listened to her, weighed her ideas.  He had evidently taken to study her, as if dispersing some wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas.  He had repeated certain of her own which had been forgotten by her.  His eyes were often on her with this that she thought humorous intentness.  She smiled.  She had assisted in raising him from his bed of sickness, whereof the memory affrighted her and melted her.  The difficulty now was to keep him indoors, and why he would not go even temporarily to a large house like Mount Laurels, whither Colonel Halkett was daily requesting him to go, she was unable to comprehend.  His love of Dr. Shrapnel might account for it.

‘Own, Jenny,’ said Beauchamp, springing up to meet her as she entered the room where he and Dr. Shrapnel sat discussing Lord Romfrey’s bearing at his visit, ’own that my uncle Everard is a true nobleman.  He has to make the round to the right mark, but he comes to it.  I could not move him—­ and I like him the better for that.  He worked round to it himself.  I ought to have been sure he would.  You’re right:  I break my head with impatience.’

‘No; you sowed seed,’ said Dr. Shrapnel.  ’Heed not that girl, my Beauchamp.  The old woman’s in the Tory, and the Tory leads the young maid.  Here’s a fable I draw from a Naturalist’s book, and we’ll set it against the dicta of Jenny Do-nothing, Jenny Discretion, Jenny Wait-for-the-Gods:  Once upon a time in a tropical island a man lay sick; so ill that he could not rise to trouble his neighbours for help; so weak that it was lifting a mountain to get up from his bed; so hopeless of succour that the last spark of distraught wisdom perching on his brains advised him to lie where he was and trouble not himself, since peace at least he could command, before he passed upon the black highroad men call our kingdom of peace:  ay, he lay there.  Now it chanced that this man had a mess to cook for his nourishment.  And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end?  He wrestled with the stark limbs of death, and cooked the mess; and that done he had no strength remaining to him to consume it, but crept to his bed like the toad into winter.  Now, meanwhile a steam arose from the mess, and he lay stretched.  So it befel that the birds of prey of the region scented the mess, and they descended and thronged at that man’s windows.  And the man’s neighbours looked up at them, for it was the sign of one who is fit for the beaks of birds, lying unburied.  Fail to spread the pall one hour where suns are decisive, and the pall comes down out of heaven!  They said, The man is dead within.  And they went to his room, and saw him and succoured him.  They lifted him out of death by the last uncut thread.

’Now, my Jenny Weigh-words, Jenny Halt-there! was it they who saved the man, or he that saved himself?  The man taxed his expiring breath to sow seed of life.  Lydiard shall put it into verse for a fable in song for our people.  I say it is a good fable, and sung spiritedly may serve for nourishment, and faith in work, to many of our poor fainting fellows!  Now you?’