He stopped and said, wiping his face:  ’I beg your pardon, my dear, but you will be glad to know I feel better.  Tell me no more just now, or I might do it again.  You must be refreshed and cheered.  What did you take last?  Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper?  And what will you take next?  Shall it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper?’

The respectful tenderness with which, on one knee before her, he helped her to remove her hat, and disentangle her pretty hair from it, was quite a chivalrous sight.  Yet who, knowing him only on the surface, would have expected chivalry—­and of the true sort, too; not the spurious—­from Mr. Grewgious?

‘Your rest too must be provided for,’ he went on; ’and you shall have the prettiest chamber in Furnival’s.  Your toilet must be provided for, and you shall have everything that an unlimited head chambermaid—­by which expression I mean a head chambermaid not limited as to outlay—­can procure.  Is that a bag?’ he looked hard at it; sooth to say, it required hard looking at to be seen at all in a dimly lighted room:  ‘and is it your property, my dear?’

‘Yes, sir.  I brought it with me.’

‘It is not an extensive bag,’ said Mr. Grewgious, candidly, ’though admirably calculated to contain a day’s provision for a canary-bird.  Perhaps you brought a canary-bird?’

Rosa smiled and shook her head.

‘If you had, he should have been made welcome,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ’and I think he would have been pleased to be hung upon a nail outside and pit himself against our Staple sparrows; whose execution must be admitted to be not quite equal to their intention.  Which is the case with so many of us!  You didn’t say what meal, my dear.  Have a nice jumble of all meals.’

Rosa thanked him, but said she could only take a cup of tea.  Mr. Grewgious, after several times running out, and in again, to mention such supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, watercresses, salted fish, and frizzled ham, ran across to Furnival’s without his hat, to give his various directions.  And soon afterwards they were realised in practice, and the board was spread.

‘Lord bless my soul,’ cried Mr. Grewgious, putting the lamp upon it, and taking his seat opposite Rosa; ’what a new sensation for a poor old Angular bachelor, to be sure!’

Rosa’s expressive little eyebrows asked him what he meant?

’The sensation of having a sweet young presence in the place, that whitewashes it, paints it, papers it, decorates it with gilding, and makes it Glorious!’ said Mr. Grewgious.  ‘Ah me!  Ah me!’

As there was something mournful in his sigh, Rosa, in touching him with her tea-cup, ventured to touch him with her small hand too.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious.  ‘Ahem!  Let’s talk!’

‘Do you always live here, sir?’ asked Rosa.

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘And always alone?’