“You’ve told us very handsomely all your tale,” says I to Andrew, when he was ended, and dismissed the good fellow with a present, while my wife dried her tears, saying that one ought rather praise God for such confessors than weep over ’em. And indeed, the more we saw of our friends, the more we learned to admire them, and could not but wonder both at their constancy in the past and their cheerfulness in the present. I made it my custom to go down every day to the inn and pass some time with the viscount, when we were wont to discourse very agreeably touching our former life in East India, while my wife carried Madam Heliodora for an airing in the coach. But of his own past trials would my friend never tell me, seeming to look back upon ’em with such aversion as he would not name them save to thank God that delivered him out of them, though he showed himself always ready to commend the virtues of my lady his wife. But though we did endeavour very earnestly to win them to leave the inn, and to take up their abode for the present with us, they refused constantly to do this, and we saw neither of them at Ellswether, until one forenoon Madam Heliodora walked up from the town, attended only by Andrew, and signified that she was come for to ask a favour. “Lend me, dear madam,” says she to Dorothy, “your elder child for a few hours, if you’ll be so good, for the viscount do affect the company of children to an extraordinary great degree, and ’twould lighten his hours of pain to divert himself with your little son.” “Madam,” says Dorothy, albeit none too gladly, for she feared letting her babes out of her sight for an hour, “sure you have but to desire, and if it lie in our power, the thing shall be done. My Harry shall wait on your ladyship home.” But, nevertheless, my wife watched her Harry (named for my honoured father) depart on Andrew’s shoulder with no small uneasiness, and could not be happy until she had him home again, bringing in his hand a great cake for his little brother. She desired much to learn how he had fared, but though she set him on the table and questioned him particularly, yet she gat nothing but to hear that the pretty lady had wept, and that in the house where she took him there was a sick gentleman that did keep comfits in a gold box in his pocket, and that had promised to make him a coach and horses out of pasteboard. But when she heard tell of Madam Heliodora’s weeping, my wife looked at me. “Sure our Harry must be near the same age as her babe that died should be by now,” saith she, as if conscience-smitten. “Well, if Harry’s company can avail anything to comfort either of these excellent persons, he shall visit upon ’em every day.”