This first little beginning of happiness grew and budded like a flower; for now more and more her father asked for her, wanted her with him; he took her arm as they walked about the grounds, and she felt as glad and proud as a child because she was tall enough and strong enough to be of real use to him. She remembered the desolation of those hours when she had thought that she should never be of use to him again, should have no place beside him, should be to him only a care and a dread; thinking of this, she was very thankfully happy. When she could do something for him, and he was pleased, it seemed to her almost as if she had never loved him so much; for, added to her old strong affection, there was now that deep and sacred tenderness which fills the heart when the person one loves becomes dependent--trustingly dependent, like a little child--upon one's hourly thought and care. The rector of St. John's had continued those visits which Miss Carroll had criticised as too frequent. When he came he seldom saw his senior warden; but the non-appearance was sufficiently excused by the state of the senior warden's health, as well as made up for by the presence of his wife. For Madam Carroll was charming in her manner to the young clergyman, always giving him the kind of welcome which made him feel sure that she was glad to see him, and that she wished him to come again. As he continued to come, it happened now and then that the mistress of the house would be engaged, and unable to see him. Perhaps she was reading to the Major from his _Saturday Review_; and this was something which no one else could do in the way he liked. She alone knew how to select the items he cared to hear, and, what was more important, how to leave the rest unread; she alone knew how to give in a line an abstract that was clear to him, and how to enliven the whole with gay little remarks of her own, which, she said, he must allow her--a diversion for her smaller feminine mind. The Major greatly valued his _Saturday Review_; he would have been much disturbed if deprived of the acquaintance it gave him with the events of the day. Not that he enjoyed listening to it; but when it was done and over for that week, he had the sensation of satisfaction in duty accomplished which a man feels who has faced an east wind for several hours without loss of optimism, and returned home with a double appreciation of his own pleasant library and bright fire. One's life should not be too personal, too easy; there should be a calm consideration of public events, a general knowledge of the outside world--though that outside world, tending as it did at present too much towards mere utilitarian interests, was not especially interesting; thus spoke the Major at the receptions (with that week's _Saturday_ fresh in his memory), as he alluded briefly to the European news. For they never discussed American news at the receptions; they never came farther westward, conversationally, than longitude