"Yes, yes," cried the cripple. "What could I do without it? Always here; for I cannot walk much--only about the room. Ah, no! I could not live without reading--and my birds. She is good and kind," he continued, nodding towards the door; "but we are poor, and it makes her angry and jealous." The lark burst forth with one of its sweetest strains as it heard its master's voice, and then, rising, the curate left the attic, closing the door after him slowly, and peering through the narrowing slit to look upon the cripple eagerly devouring a page of the work he had brought. The Frenchwoman was upon the first landing, and saluted the curate with a sinister meaning smile as he passed her and thoughtfully descended. "But he is mean, I tell you," cried _ma mere_ angrily, as she once more stood beside her son. "What does he give us but words--words which are worth nothing? But what is that? My faith, a book he brought you? You shall not read; it makes you silly, and to forget your mother, who does so much for you. But I will!" "Ah!" cried Jean, painfully starting from his seat, and snatching back the volume, and just in time, for the next moment would have seen it flying from the open window. "Then I will sell the lark when you are asleep," cried the woman spitefully. The youth's eyes glittered, as, with an angry look, he hissed between his teeth, "Then I will kill the dogs!" But the anger passed from his countenance in a few moments, and smiling softly, he said, "No, no, _ma mere_; you would not sell my poor bird, because I love it, and it would hurt me;" and then, casting down her knitting, the woman sprang across the room, throwing her arms round the cripple, and kissing him passionately, calling him by every endearing name, as she parted the hair from his broad forehead, and gazed in his bright dark eyes with all a mother's fondness. But the curate heard nothing of this--nothing but the loud song of the lark, which rang through the house--as slowly and thoughtfully he descended the worn and creaking stairs, while the woman's words seemed to keep repeating themselves in a slow measured way, vibrating in his ears, and troubling him sorely with their cutting meaning; and more than once he found himself forming with his lips, "Our beauty, some of us." Volume Two, Chapter VI. SHADES. The lark was silent once more; and now from the open door of the first-floor, rising and falling, with a loud and rapid "click, click, click," came the sound of Lucy Grey's sewing-machine--"click, click," the sharp pulsations of the little throbbing engine, whose needle darted in and out of the soft material held beneath it by those white fingers. But as one of the stairs gave a louder crack than ordinary, the machine stopped, and the quiet, earnest, watching face of Lucy Grey appeared at the door, which she now held open, bowing with a naive grace in answer to the curate's salutation.