Before these had become terrifying to Charles’s children, they did not shrink from talking to him, and were encouraged to do so, as he spoke more, and more sensibly to them than to any one else. “Why are you so very fond of water, I wonder?” exclaimed Julien, one day, laughing, when White held out his hand to snatch some which looked cool and clear in the boy’s hand. “O yes, you may have it. I can get plenty more. Why do you want so much water?” “I drink water. And my rat—Where is my rat?” None of the family could make out why he looked about him for a rat: but Steele’s conjecture was that such an animal might have found its way out of the moat of the prison into the cell where no other living thing could enter but the silent turnkey. On inquiry, this was found to be the case; and the circumstances were touching in the extreme to those who had never known what it was to want such a resource. It was observed that White was as greedy of bread as of water, though not always for the purpose of eating it. Nothing could tempt him from it when there was any in the room; and whatever was offered in exchange for a crust, however delicate to the taste, or glittering to the eye, was rejected. “Bread, bread. Water, water,” was for ever his cry. “He likes to play on my bird-organ,” observed Julien, “and I told him he might keep it: but he thrust it back upon me for a piece of bread. He sold it much cheaper, papa,—for far less bread,—than the people that made it. I think that is very silly.” “It depends upon the value he puts upon what he has in exchange,” answered papa. “Well, you told me how much bread was worth this organ; and it was much more than I gave him.” “Yes; but you might happen to be shut up, as he has been, where one loaf of bread would be more useful to you than ten such at home.” “Why more useful? I can but eat bread anywhere.” “Yes; you can give it away,” interposed mamma. “If you were shut up for several years in a silent and nearly dark place, where nobody ever came to you, and were to hear a noise one day, and to see something moving, and to find out that it was a rat which had made its way to your cell; and if you wished that the rat should come again, and learn to know you, and feed tamely out of your hand, would you not desire to have some food to give it?” “O yes: I would give it part of my dinner.” “But if you had very little dinner, scarcely enough to satisfy your own hunger, you would buy more bread for your rat if you could. If your jailer asked you much more than the bread would be worth out of prison, you would give it him rather than your rat should not come and play with you. You would pay him first all your copper, and then all your silver, and then all your gold.” “Yes, because I could not play with money so pleasantly as with a live animal, and there would be nothing else that I could buy in such a place. I had rather have the company of my rat than a pocket full of gold.”