"To be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no."

Hilary always contrived to make his supper herself.

Those pleasant days were now over. Mr. Lyon was gone. As she stool
alone over the kitchen fire, she thought--as now and then she let
herself think for a minute or two in her busy prosaic life--of that
August night, standing at the front door, of his last "good-by," and
last hand-clasp, tight, warm, and firm; and somehow she, like
Johanna, trusted in him.

Not exactly in his love; it seemed almost impossible that he should
love her, at least till she grew much more worthy of him than now;
but in himself, that he would never be less himself, less thoroughly
good and true than now. That, some time, he would be sure to come
back again, and take up his old relations with them, brightening
their dull life with his cheerfulness; infusing in their feminine
household the new element of a clear, strong, energetic, manly will,
which sometimes made Johanna say that instead of twenty-five the
young man might be forty; and, above all, bringing into their poverty
the silent sympathy of one who had fought his own battle with the
world--a hard one, too, as his face sometimes showed--though he never
said much about it.

Of the results of this pleasant relation--whether she being the only
truly marriageable person in the house. Robert Lyon intended to marry
her, or was expected to do so, or that society would think it a very