ssioned him to inform Mary Ann Ellis that she need not try
to get any situation for at least two months' time, because fourteen
shillings a week would be paid to her during that period, to enable her
to get thoroughly well again.

John Douglas grew to be a proud man. He was proud of having paid off
that five pounds, and standing free of all the world; he was proud of
his gradually-increasing account at the Government Savings Bank as a
guarantee against future ill; but he was proudest of all of his
patient, whose convalescence he in a measure attributed to himself.
The days were longer now, and the weather fine; on the clear evenings,
or Saturday afternoons, these two would get into an omnibus, and go
away out to Camberwell Green, or Kennington Park, or Clapham Common,
and sit on a bench, and watch the young folks enjoying their sports and
diversions. He was better dressed now, and she had got into the way of
calling him 'Sir.' He told her a great deal about Scotland, and the
mountains, and the glens with the birch-trees and waterfalls; but he
always got into a difficulty when he came to the sea, which she had
never seen. She could not understand that.

'Now, lassie, look at that piece of water there,' he would say to her,
at the pond on Clapham Common. 'Cannot you imagine its going out and
out until it gets far beyond the trees and houses yonder, until it gets
beyond everything, and meets the sky?'

'I see what you mean, sir,' she would say; 'but I can't understand it:
for I can't help thinking, if there was nothing on the other side to
hold it up, it must tumble down. How can water hold itself up in the
air?'

'Dear, dear me, lass!' he would say impatiently, 'have I not explained
to ye how everything in the world, land and hills and everything, is
held together?'

'Yes, sir; but water shifts so,' she would say; and he would take to
something else.

The two months went by, and she got stronger and stronger, though
sometimes she grew a little anxious about her chances of getting
another situation. During this constant companionship, he had become
much attached--in a compassionate sort of fashion--to this child whom
chance had thrown in his way. He could see her good points, and her
weak ones. She was of a kindly disposition; truthful, he thought; with
no very distinct religion, but she had a general desire to be good;
simple and frugal in her ways of living,--though this was a necessity,
and she had no i