lay for days and days in my sick room, often thinking, but never
speaking, about the lad. Never once asking for him to come to me;
not though it would have been life to me to see his merry face--I
longed after him so.

At last I broke the bonds of sickness--which Jael always riveted as
long and as tightly as she could--and plunged into the outer world
again.

It was one market-day--Jael being absent--that I came down-stairs. A
soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering
robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the
thinned trees of the Abbey yard. I opened the window to hear him,
though all the while in mortal fear of Jael. I listened, but caught
no tone of her sharp voice, which usually came painfully from the
back regions of the house; it would ill have harmonised with the
sweet autumn day and the robin's song. I sat, idly thinking so, and
wondering whether it were a necessary and universal fact that human
beings, unlike the year, should become harsh and unlovely as they
grow old.

My robin had done singing, and I amused myself with watching a spot
of scarlet winding down the rural road, our house being on the verge
where Norton Bury melted into "the country." It turned out to be the
cloak of a well-to-do young farmer's wife riding to market in her
cart beside her jolly-looking spouse. Very spruce and self-satisfied
she appeared, and the market-people turned to stare after her, for
her costume was a novelty then. Doubtless, many thought as I did,
how much prettier was scarlet than duffle grey.