The fan which broke Augusta’s collar-bone broke down a barrier for Jabez. No personal sacrifice attended the service he rendered. He but went and came as an active messenger. But he went and came with intelligence and promptitude, and exercised for mother and daughter both the care and forethought of a much older man. In the father’s absence the father was not missed. What came under Mrs. Ashton’s own eye Mrs. Ashton could appreciate, and the commendation of Dr. Hull was not without its weight. He had said, “Capital fellow to send for a doctor, that messenger of yours, Mrs. Ashton! A determined, persistent fellow! Would see me, and haul me off with only half a dinner, though I protested, and he had already got a surgeon there before me!” His thought about the sedan chair, which he had accompanied to Mosley Street to insure care on the part of the chairmen, and had ordered into the very lobby of the house; the cautious manner in which he had lifted Augusta thence, and borne her to the ready couch, coupled with his protection of her daughter in the theatre the night before, weighed down the scale already trembling in the balance, and Mrs. Ashton’s “Jabez, I am deeply indebted to you,” was not mere words. He was her messenger to the Chadwicks, her amanuensis to Mr. Ashton; and when Ellen and her mother arrived somewhere about tea-time, for the second time he was invited to join their party; and one, if not two, pair of cheeks burned as the invitation was given. Then, the night Mr. Ashton returned home, to find Augusta an invalid, he was gratified to see Jabez again at the tea-table, and after that at odd times, until the restraint upon him gradually wore away, and he would read to Augusta and Ellen, as the latter sat at work, and do his best to make the time pass pleasantly. Next Mr. Ashton took it into his head to teach him backgammon and cribbage, to help to make his own evenings at home more lively. And Mrs. Chadwick, who for some occult reason had resisted her husband’s desire to show courtesy to his preserver, could scarcely be less gracious than her grander sister, who owed him so much less; so now the green-parlour door in Oldham Street was opened to him, and as Jabez refreshed his memory with Hogarth’s prints, he felt that he had made another step up the ladder. Those were halcyon days; while Augusta, too tall to be robust, recovered so slowly, and was so much gratified by his attempts to entertain her. Halcyon days for more than one. Yet, ere Jabez was out of his apprenticeship, or Augusta had left her pillowed sofa, a pebble was thrown into the stream which broke the surface of the tranquil waters, and disturbed them for ever.