him down as fast as they could. So
tired was he, that he could hardly say anything all the time he was
there; and Alfred had to keep silence for fear of wearying him still
more. There was a sort of shyness, too, which hindered the two from even
letting their eyes meet, often as they had heard each other's voices, and
had greeted one another through the thin partition. As Paul lay with his
eyes shut, Alfred raised himself to take a good survey of the sharp
pinched features, the hollow cheeks, deep-sunk pits for the eyes,--and
yellow ghastly skin of the worn face, and the figure, so small and wasted
that it was like nothing, curled up in all those wraps. One who could
read faces better than young Alfred could, would have gathered not only
that the boy who lay there had gone through a great deal, but that there
was much mind and thought crushed down by misery, and a gentle nature not
fit to stand up alone against it, and so sinking down without exertion.

And when Alfred was learning a verse of his favourite hymn--

'There is a rill whose waters rise--'

Paul's eye-lids rose, and looked him all over dreamily, comparing him
perhaps with the notions he had carried away from his two former
glimpses. Alfred did not look now so utterly different from anything he
had seen before, since Mrs. King and Ellen had been hovering round his
bed for nearly a month past; but still the fair skin, pink colour, dark
eye-lashes, glossy hair, and white hands, were like a dream to him, as if
they belonged to the pure land whither Alfred was going, and he was quite
loath to hear him speak like another boy, as he knew he could do, having
often listened to his talk through the wall. At the least sign of
Alfred's looking up, he turned away his eyes as if he had been doing
something by stealth.

He came in continually after this; and little things each day, and
Harold's talk, made the two acquainted and like boys together; but it was
not till Christmas Day that they felt like knowing each other.

It was the first time Paul felt himself able to be of any use, for he was
to be left in charge of Alfred, while Mrs. King and both her other
children went to church. Paul was sadly crippled still, and every frost
filled his bones with acute pain, and bent him like an old man, so that
he was still a long way from getting down-stairs, but he could make a
shift to get about the room, and he looked greatly pleased when Alfred
declared that he shou