And Cuthbert comes when he can spare a day--comes to bring them news of the far-away world whose vexed and troubled murmurs they never hear, and to receive with affectionate sympathy, all they tell him of their own plans and exertions. Cuthbert is admitted to the work-room, and takes out Agnes and Rose to their nightly walk, upon which Martha, who, herself actively employed, has no need of this, insists; and Agnes leans upon him as on a good and gentle brother; and there comes a strange ease and repose to Rose’s heart as she walks shyly by his side in the twilight, saying little, but preserving with a singular tenacity of recollection everything the others say. And Rose, waking sometimes now to her old personal grief--a thing which seems dead, distant and selfish, under the shadow of this present sorrow--recollects that Martha’s “capital” is from Mr. Buchanan--that Cuthbert is his favourite nephew, and that there may be truth yet in the story which fell like a stone upon her heart. But Rose only speculates unawares upon these individual anxieties--they seem to her guilty, and she is ashamed to harbour them--yet still unconsciously she looks for Cuthbert’s coming, and when he comes grows abstracted and silent, and looks like a shy, incompetent girl, instead of the fair, sweet-hearted woman into whose fuller form and maturity her youth developes day by day. Yet Cuthbert’s eyes are witched and charmed, and he has strangely correct understanding of every shy, half-broken word she says; and Rose would start, and wonder, and scarcely believe, in her timid unconscious humility, could she see how these broken words remain in Cuthbert’s heart. CHAPTER XXI. I am a very foolish, fond old man, Fourscore and upward KING LEAR. “I WAS born this day fourscore and five years ago,” said Dragon. “It’s a great age, bairns, and what few folk live to see; and for every appearance that’s visible to me, I may live ither ten, Missie, and never ane be a prin the waur. I would like grand mysel to make out the hunder years, and it would be a credit to the place, and to a’ belonging till’t; and naebody wishes ill to me nor envies me for my lang life. Just you look at that arm, Missie; it’s a strong arm for a man o’ eighty-five.” And Dragon stretched out his long thin arm, and snapt the curved brown fingers--poor old Dragon! Not a child in Maidlin Cross but could have overcome the decayed power which once had knit those loose joints, and made them a strong man’s arm; but Dragon waved it in the air exultingly, and was proud of his age and strength, and repeated again with earnestness: “But I would like grand to make out the hunder year.”