Helen's
return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been
another room in the house vacant (which there was not), to install
this noisy, riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random and
smelling of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent, delicate,
timid, female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone all the
twenty-four hours. She restored a home to him and imposed its duties.
He therefore told Mr. Burley that in future he should write and study
in his own room, and hinted, with many a blush, and as delicately as
he could, that it seemed to him that whatever he obtained from his
pen ought to be halved with Burley, to whose interest he owed the
employment, and from whose books or whose knowledge he took what helped
to maintain it; but that the other half, if his, he could no longer
afford to spend upon feasts or libations. He had another life to provide
for.

Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earning
with much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's sober
appropriation of the other half; and though a good-natured, warm-hearted
man, felt extremely indignant at the sudden interposition of poor Helen.
However, Leonard was firm; and then Burley grew sullen, and so they
parted. But the rent was still to be paid. How? Leonard for the
first time thought of the pawnbroker. He had clothes to spare, and
Riccabocca's watch. No; that last he shrank from applying to such base
uses.

He went home at noon, and met Helen at the street-door. She too had
been out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and the
sense of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which Leonard
had taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's. She had now
gone out and bought wool and implements for work; and meanwhile she had
paid the rent.

Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he knew
about the rent, and was very angry. He paid back to her that night what
she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride, and wept more
when she saw the next day a woful hiatus in his wardrobe.

But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sat
by his side, working too; so that next day, and the next, slipped
peacefully away, and in the evening of the second he asked her to walk
out in the fields. She sprang up joyously at the invitation, when bang
went the door, and in reeled John Burley,--drunk,--and so drunk!