Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet speaking, and in a moment she had met her father at the door of the room, and was hanging on his shoulder. The expression of her face, as they both looked towards me, I felt to be very touching. There was such deep fondness for him, and gratitude to him for all his love and care, in her beautiful look; and there was such a fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by him, even in my inmost thoughts, and to let no harsh construction find any place against him; she was at once so proud of him and devoted to him, yet so compassionate and sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too, that nothing she could have said would have expressed more to me, or moved me more.

We were to drink tea at the Doctor’s. We went there at the usual hour, and round the study fireside found the Doctor and his young wife, and her mother. The Doctor, who made as much of my going away as if I were going to China, received me as an honoured guest, and called for a log of wood to be thrown on the fire, that he might see the face of his old pupil reddening in the blaze.

“I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s stead, Wick-field,” said the Doctor, warming his hands; “I am getting lazy, and want ease. I shall relinquish all my young people in another six months, and lead a quieter life.”

“You have said so any time these ten years, Doctor,” Mr. Wick-field answered.

“But now I mean to do it,” returned the Doctor. “My first master will succeed me—I am in earnest at last—so you’ll soon have to arrange our contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.”

“And to take care,” said Mr. Wickfield, “that you’re not imposed on, eh? As you certainly would be in any contract you should make for yourself. Well! I am ready. There are worse tasks than that, in my calling.”

“I shall have nothing to think of then,” said the Doctor, with a smile, “but my Dictionary, and this other contract-bargain—Annie.”

As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at the tea-table by Agnes, she seemed to me to avoid his look with such unwonted hesitation and timidity, that his attention became fixed upon her, as if something were suggested to his thoughts.

“There is a post come in from India, I observe,” he said, after a short silence.

“By the by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!” said the Doctor.

“Indeed!”

“Poor dear Jack!” said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head. “That trying climate! Like living, they tell me, on a sand-heap, underneath a burning-glass! He looked strong, but he wasn’t. My dear Doctor, it was his spirit, not his constitution, that he ventured on so boldly. Annie, my dear, I am sure you must perfectly recollect that your cousin never was strong—not what can be called robust, you know,” said Mrs. Markleham, with emphasis, and looking round upon us generally; “from the time when my daughter and himself were children together, and walking about, arm-in-arm, the livelong day.”

Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.

“Do I gather from what you say, Ma’am, that Mr. Maldon is ill?” asked Mr. Wickfield.

“Ill!” replied the Old Soldier. “My dear Sir, he’s all sorts of things.”

“Except well?” said Mr. Wickfield.