care of themselves.

The young man John got off a little wink, and pointed slyly with his
thumb in the direction of our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to
think this speech was intended.

If it was meant for him, he did n't appear to know that it was. Indeed,
he seems somewhat listless of late, except when the conversation falls
upon one of those larger topics that specially interest him, and then he
grows excited, speaks loud and fast, sometimes almost savagely,--and, I
have noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his right side,
as if there were something that ached, or weighed, or throbbed in that
region.

While he speaks in this way, the general conversation is interrupted,
and we all listen to him. Iris looks steadily in his face, and then
he will turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own
melancholy gaze. I do believe that they have some kind of understanding
together, that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is
a mystery, which is going to break upon us all of a sudden, involving
the relations of these two persons. From the very first, they have taken
to each other. The one thing they have in common is the heroic will.
In him, it shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, in doing
battle for "free trade and no right of search" on the high seas of
religious controversy, and especially in fighting the battles of his
crooked old city. In her, it is standing up for her little friend with
the most queenly disregard of the code of boarding-house etiquette.
People may say or look what they like,--she will have her way about this
sentiment of hers.

The Poor Relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman
says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems
to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the
toothache,--and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind
blows from, she will catch her "death o' cold."

The landlady herself came to him one day, as I have found out, and
tried to persuade him to hold his tongue.--The boarders was gettin'
uneasy,--she said,--and some of 'em would go, she mistrusted, if he
talked any more about things that belonged to the ministers to settle.
She was a poor woman, that had known better days, but all her livin'
depended on her boarders, and she was sure there was n't any of 'em she
set so much by as she did by him; but there was them that never liked to
hear about sech th