“You can go now, dolly,” she said. “I don’t want you any more.” Here she paused a while, as if listening to a reply, then went on: “I am much obliged to you, dolly; but what am I to do with you? You won’t never speak! It has made me quite sad many a time, you know very well! But you can’t help it! So go away, please, and be nobody, for you never would be anybody! I did my best to get you to be somebody, but you wouldn’t! Thank you all the same! I will take you and put you where you can be as dull as you please, and nobody will mind.”--Here she left Clare, went down, and lifted her plaything.--“Dolly, dolly,” she resumed, “he’s come! I knew he would! And you don’t know it because you’re nobody!” Without looking back, or a word of adieu to Clare, she went slowly down the steps, one by one, with the doll in her arms, manifesting for it neither contempt nor tenderness. Many a child would have carried the discrowned favourite by one leg; she carried her in both hands. Clare waited a while on the narrow, closed-in, wooden stair, not a little wondering, and full of thought. His wonder, however, had no puzzlement in it. The child’s behaviour involved no difficulty. The two existences came together, and each understood the other in virtue of its essential nature. In after years Clare could put the thing into such words; he sought none at the time. The child was lonely. She had done her best with her doll, but it had failed her. It was not companionable. The moment she looked in Clare’s face, she knew that he loved her, and that she had been waiting for _him_! She was not surprised to see him; how should it be otherwise than just so! He was come: good bye, dolly! The child had imagination--next to conscience the strongest ally of common sense. She knew, like St. Paul, that an idol is nothing. As men and women grow in imagination and common sense, more and more will sacred silly dolls be cast to the moles and the bats. But pretty Fancy and limping Logic are powerful usurpers in commonplace minds. Clare saw nothing more of her that day, neither tried to see her; but he did his work in an atmosphere of roses. The work was not nearly so interesting as house-work, but Clare was an honest gentleman, therefore did it well: that it was not interesting was of no account; it was his work! But to know that a child was in the house, not merely a child for him to love, but a child that already loved him so that he could be her servant indeed, changed the stupid bank almost into the dome of the angels. His fellow clerks took little notice of him beyond what, in the routine of the day, was unavoidable. He had been a page-boy: the less they did with him the better! Were they not wronged by his introduction into their company? The poorest creature of them believed he would have served out the burglars better if the chance had been his. Chapter LVIII. CHILD-TALK.