Her opening of the hall door was answered by Mr. Kendal emerging from his study.  He was looking restless and anxious, came to meet her, and uncloaked her, while he affectionately scolded her for being so venturesome.  She told him where she had been, and he smiled, saying, ‘You are a busy spirit!  But you must not be too imprudent.’

‘Oh, nothing hurts me.  It is poor Gilbert that I am anxious about.’

’So am I. Gilbert has not a constitution fit for exposure.  I wish he were come home.’

‘Could we not send for him?  Suppose we sent a fly.’

He was consenting with a pleased smile, when the door opened, and there stood the dripping Gilbert, completely wet through, pale and chilled, with his hair plastered down, and his coat stuck all over with the horse’s short hair.

‘You must go to bed at once, Gilbert,’ said his father.  ’Are you cold?’

‘Very.  It was such a horrid driving wind, and I rode so fast,’ said Gilbert; violently shivering, as they helped to pull him out of his great coat; he put his hand to his mouth, and said that his face ached.  Mr. Kendal was very anxious, and Albinia hurried the boy up to bed, and meantime ordered quickly a basin of the soup preparing for dinner, warmed some worsted socks at the fire, and ran upstairs with them.

He seemed to have no substance in him; he had hardly had energy to undress himself, and she found him with his face hidden on the pillow, shivering audibly, and actually crying.  She was aghast.

The boys with whom she had been brought up, would never have given way so entirely without resistance; but between laughing, cheering, scolding, covering him up close, and rubbing his hands with her own, she comforted him, so that he could be grateful and cheerful when his father himself came up with the soup.  Albinia noticed a sort of shudder pass over Mr. Kendal as he entered, and he stood close by Gilbert, turning his back on everything else, while he watched the boy eat the soup, as if restored by every spoonful.  ’That was a good thought,’ was his comment to his wife, and the look of gratitude brought a flush of pleasure into her cheek.

Of all the dinners, this was the most pleasant; he was more gentle and affectionate, and she made him tell her about the Persian poets, and promise to show her some specimens of the Rose Garden of Saadi—­she had never before been so near having his pursuits opened to her.

‘What a favourite Gilbert is!’ Lucy said to Sophia, as Albinia lighted a candle and went up to his room.

‘He makes such a fuss,’ said Sophy.  ’What is there in being wet through to cry about?’

Albinia heard a little shuffle as she opened the door, and Gilbert pushed a book under his pillow.  She asked him what he had been reading.  ‘Oh,’ he said, ’he had not been doing it long, for the flickering of the candle hurt his eyes.’

‘Yes, you had better not,’ said Albinia, moving the flaring light to a less draughty part of the dingy whitewashed attic.  ’Or shall I read to you?’