being asked her wishes, and again put her hand in
Leonard's. In short, so it was settled.

The little girl made up a bundle of the things she most prized or
needed. Leonard did not feel the additional load, as he slung it to his
knapsack; the rest of the luggage was to be sent to London as soon as
Leonard wrote (which he promised to do soon) and gave an address.

Helen paid her last visit to the churchyard; and she joined her
companion as he stood on the road, without the solemn precincts. And now
they had gone on some hours; and when he asked her if she were tired,
she still answered "No." But Leonard was merciful, and made their day's
journey short; and it took them some days to reach London. By the long
lonely way they grew so intimate, at the end of the second day, they
called each other brother and sister; and Leonard, to his delight, found
that as her grief, with the bodily movement and the change of scene,
subsided from its first intenseness and its insensibility to other
impressions, she developed a quickness of comprehension far beyond her
years. Poor child! that had been forced upon her by Necessity. And
she understood him in his spiritual consolations, half poetical, half
religious; and she listened to his own tale, and the story of his
self-education and solitary struggles,--those, too, she understood.
But when he burst out with his enthusiasm, his glorious hopes, his
confidence in the fate before them, then she would shake her head very
quietly and very sadly. Did she comprehend them! Alas! perhaps too well.
She knew more as to real life than he did. Leonard was at first their
joint treasurer; but before the second day was over, Helen seemed to
discover that he was too lavish; and she told him so, with a prudent
grave look, putting her hand on his arm as he was about to enter an
inn to dine; and the gravity would have been comic, but that the eyes
through their moisture were so meek and grateful. She felt he was about
to incur that ruinous extravagance on her account. Somehow or other, the
purse found its way into her keeping, and then she looked proud and in
her natural element.

Ah! what happy meals under her care were provided; so much more
enjoyable than in dull, sanded inn-parlours, swarming with flies, and
reeking with stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a
village, bound forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a
pretty blue jug--which she had bought on the road,--t