“Well, we must allow for one another; and there is no accounting for tastes. _Jupiter_ likes turtle; but the other dogs won’t touch it. I had a dog once who would eat cigars. If he found a stump in the road, it was quite as good as a bone to him; but he did not live very long, poor fellow! Now let them take away the things; and when you have had your glass of port, come to me in the drawing-room. Don’t hurry, because I mean to have my nap.” As yet, she had never mentioned Kitty’s name, which surprised me not a little; but I thought it likely that she was still rather sore at my behaviour. For when she had come to see us lately, it had been more than I could bear to listen calmly while everybody offered any sort of guess; just as they might discuss a case of abduction in the papers, or the theft of a female dog, who “answered to the name of Kitty.” CHAPTER XLI. TRUE COMFORT. EVERY allowance should be made for a man who is in deep trouble. Not because it is his due, for that would count but little; but because he expects it, which he never does of his other debts, after experience. But he does hope to receive fine feeling, when he knows how cheap it is; and his sense of bad luck blackens in him, when he cannot even get that much. And yet he ought to feel how trumpery are his trivial joys and sorrows, in the whirligig of this great world. He does his utmost thus to take it; to shudder at the wrongs of others, and to glow at their redress, to suck his fingers more and more with the relish of his neighbour’s pie; and perhaps with practice he begins to get some moonlight pleasure thus. But, alas! before he is perfect in it, some little turn of thought comes home, some soft remembrance thrills his heart, as the sun quivers in a well-spring, and all his nature lets him know that he belongs to it, and is itself. A little touch of this kind took me, when I was full of higher things, or at least was trying so to be. I had not been to church since my day of dole, my day of doom and desolation. How could I go to Sunbury church, and see the spot where Kitty stood and stole my whole devotion, and see the altar-rails where she had knelt and vowed herself mine for ever; and now, with no Kitty at my side, be stared at by a hundred eyes, all asking—“Well, how do you get on?” But now in this strange place, I went to the Sunday morning service, though Kitty had been there too with me, in the happy days not long gone by. My aunt came with me, and with much fine feeling allowed me to sit where my dear had sat, and to put my hat on the selfsame peg on which she had placed it for me. At first it was a bitter time; but I went through it bravely, though at first I could not bring myself to open the Prayer-book, which I had brought in the bag with my clothes from Sunbury. My wife had given it to me at Baycliff, when I happened to admire it in a window, and I remembered that she had written “Kit,” and nothing else, on the fly-leaf.