have been comic, but that the eyes through their moisture were so meek
and grateful. She felt he was about to incur that ruinous extravagance
on her account. Somehow or other, the purse found its way into her
keeping, and then she looked proud and in her natural element.

Ah! what happy meals under her care were provided; so much more enjoyable
than in dull, sanded inn-parlours, swarming with flies, and reeking with
stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a village, bound
forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a pretty blue
jug--which she had bought on the road,--the last filled with new milk;
the first with new bread, and some special dainty in radishes or water-
tresses. And she had such a talent for finding out the prettiest spot
whereon to halt and dine: sometimes in the heart of a wood,--so still,
it was like a forest in fairy tales, the hare stealing through the
alleys, or the squirrel peeping at them from the boughs; sometimes by a
little brawling stream, with the fishes seen under the clear wave, and
shooting round the crumbs thrown to them. They made an Arcadia of the
dull road up to their dread Thermopylae, the war against the million that
waited them on the other side of their pass through Tempo.

"Shall we be as happy when we are great?" said Leonard, in his grand
simplicity.

Helen sighed, and the wise little head was shaken.




CHAPTER VIII.