By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation. I was slow
to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become less weak, and Joe
stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip again.
For the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my need,
that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk to me in the
old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in the old unassertive
protecting way, so that I would half believe that all my life since the
days of the old kitchen was one of the mental troubles of the fever that
was gone. He did everything for me except the household work, for which
he had engaged a very decent woman, after paying off the laundress on
his first arrival. "Which I do assure you, Pip," he would often say, in
explanation of that liberty; "I found her a tapping the spare bed, like
a cask of beer, and drawing off the feathers in a bucket, for sale.
Which she would have tapped yourn next, and draw'd it off with you a
laying on it, and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in
the soup-tureen and wegetable-dishes, and the wine and spirits in your
Wellington boots."
We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride, as we had
once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship. And when the day
came, and an open carriage was got into the Lane, Joe wrapped me up,
took me in his arms, carried me down to it, and put me in, as if I were
still the small helpless creature to whom he had so abundantly given of
the wealth of his great nature.
And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the country,
where the rich summer growth was already on the trees and on the grass,
and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The day happened to be
Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness around me, and thought
how it had grown and changed, and how the little wild-flowers had been
forming, and the voices of the birds had been strengthening, by day and
by night, under the sun and under the stars, while poor I lay burning
and tossing on my bed, the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed
there came like a check upon my peace. But when I heard the Sunday
bells, and looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt
that I was not nearly thankful enough,--that I was too weak yet to be
even that,--and I laid my head on Joe's shoulder, as I had laid it long
ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too much
for my young senses.