limbs all shaking and wagging with pleasant excitement. Suddenly she
turned from him, and burst into tears. She sat down on a stone by
the wayside, not a hundred yards from home, and buried her face in
her hands, and gave way to a passion of pent-up sorrow; so terrible
and full of agony were her low cries, that the idiot stood by her,
aghast and silent. All his joy gone for the time, but not, like her
joy, turned into ashes. Some thought struck him. Yes! the sight of
her woe made him think, great as the exertion was. He ran, and
stumbled, and shambled home, buzzing with his lips all the time. She
never missed him. He came back in a trice, bringing with him his
cherished paper windmill, bought on that fatal day when Michael had
taken him into Kendal to have his doom of perpetual idiocy
pronounced. He thrust it into Susan's face, her hands, her lap,
regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received. He
leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing
louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad
eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why: and she
now, comforter in her turn, tried to soothe him by twirling his
windmill. But it was broken; it made no noise; it would not go
round. This seemed to afflict Susan more than him. She tried to
make it right, although she saw the task was hopeless; and while she
did so, the tears rained down unheeded from her bent head on the
paper toy.

"It won't do," said she, at last. "It will never do again." And,
somehow, she took the accident and her words as omens of the love
that was broken, and that she feared could never be pieced together
more. She rose up and took Willie's hand, and the two went slowly
into the house.