"Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress--it gave us shelter when we had _no home_--we have praised God in it--and, while life remains, I think I shall never part from it--Rosamund does every thing for me--"
"And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;"--and then Rosamund fell a crying.
"You are a good girl, Rosamund, and if you do but find friends when I am dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live--but, God bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer."
Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she had never beheld so lovely a creature.
They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together--they rambled over all Rosamund's favourite haunts--through many a sunny field--by secret glade or woodwalk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved Clare.
Who now so happy as Rosamund? She had oft-times heard Allan speak with great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her beloved Clare.
Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some chaste endearment. Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence.
Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with her when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested, most of them, by the passing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of present impulse:--her conversation did not consist in a comparison of vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it had all the freshness of young sensation in it.
"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is not tired. She talks him to death!"
"Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_ sometimes."
"Oh no, I did not mean _that_--it's very different--I am used to all her ways, and I can humour her, and please her, and I ought to do it, for she is the only friend I ever had in the world."