"See here, Barty," she said, "let you go on now, and tell your mother
not to be waiting tea for me. I'll take me own time. Tell her never
fear I'll turn up, only I like to go me own pace!" She turned to
Christian. "Go on you too, my dear; I'm well enough pleased with me
own company, and I hate to be delaying you. I'll sit down for a while
and admire the scenery."

Thus did Aunt Bessy, as she complacently told herself, watch over the
interests of her great-nephew, and though her method was crude, it
indisputably achieved its object.

Christian and Barty Mangan walked on in silence that was made
companionable by the gurgling whisper of the river behind its screen
of hazels and alders; a whisper broken now and again by the tittering
laugh of the flying water over a shallow place, like someone with a
good story that he cannot quite venture to tell out loud.

Barty was saying to himself, distractedly: "What'll I say to her?
What'll I talk to her about?" with each repetition winding himself,
like a cocoon, deeper in webs of shyness.

Christian's social perceptions were hypersensitive, and the _cris de
coeur_ of her suffering companion were only too audible to her
spiritual ear. At eighteen, the quality of mercy has seldom developed;
the young demand mercy, they expect to receive, not to bestow it; but
in this girl was something that made her different from her fellows.
It was as though a soul more tempered, more instructed, more subtle
and refined, had been given to her, than is vouchsafed to the majority
of the poor creatures who are sent into this difficult world with an
equipment that rarely meets its demands.