"You see God wants to keep him out of prison too," he said, as they
walked along the street.

But to Sara this hardly conveyed an idea. She walked by his side in
silence.

"Charley! Charley!" she cried, when she saw him white on the bed,
rolling his head from side to side. Charley ordered her away with
words awful to hear, but which from him meant no more than words of
ordinary temper in the mouth of the well-nurtured man or woman. She
had spoiled and indulged him all his life, and now for the first time
she was nothing to him, while the master who had lectured and
restrained him was everything. When the surgeon wanted to change his
dressings, he would not let him touch them till his master came.
Before he was able to leave his bed, he had developed for Stephen a
terrier-like attachment. But, after the first feverishness was over,
his sister waited upon him.

Stephen got a lodging, and abandoned his back room to the brother and
sister. But he had to attend to his shop, and therefore saw much of
both of them. Finding then to his astonishment that Sara could not
read, he gave all his odd moments to her instruction, and her mind
being at rest about Charley so long as she had him in bed, her spirit
had leisure to think of other things.

She learned rapidly. The lesson-book was of course the New Testament;
and Stephen soon discovered that Sara's questions, moving his pity at
first because of the ignorance they displayed, always left him
thinking about some point that had never occurred to him before; so