But to return to my subject, from which I have been wandering for the pleasure of putting in the old gentleman’s letter. The Parson in our walks set me thinking about fifty subjects which I never cared about before, because I could see that he was himself deeply interested in them, and really believed whatever he said to me. We used to get home by about twelve o’clock, and then I would go away by myself, and think over what we had been talking about till dinner. And, after dinner, Miss Lucy, and sometimes Joe, would come out and walk with us till tea. Sometimes we went to the village school, and I sat at the door and heard them teaching; and as long as Mr. Warton was with us it was all right, but afterwards, when he had gone, I could see that the schoolmistress, a young woman of about thirty, sallow-faced and rather prudish, used to look at me as if I had no business there. When he left, Mr. Warton gave me a kind invitation to go and see him in town, and added he had no doubt I should come, for he could see I should soon want some such work as he could give me to do. After he was gone I tumbled fairly head over heels into the net in which I suppose every man “as is a man” (as old Seeley would say) gets enmeshed once in his life. I found it was no use to struggle any longer, and gave myself up to the stream, with all sails set. Now there is no easier thing than going down stream somehow, when wind and tide are with you; but to steer so as to make the most of wind and tide, isn’t so easy--at least I didn’t find it so. For as often as not, I think, I did the wrong thing, and provoked, instead of pleasing her. I used to get up every morning before six, to be ready to wish her good morning as she went out to the dairy; but I don’t think she half liked it, for she was generally in a very old gown tucked through her pocket holes, and pattens. Then after breakfast I used to hanker round the kitchen, or still-room, or wherever she might happen to be, like a Harry-long-legs round a candle. And again in the afternoon I never could keep away, but was at her side in the garden, or on her walks; in fact, to get rid of me, she had fairly to go up to her room. But I couldn’t help myself; I felt that, come what might, I must be near her while I could; and on the whole, I think she was pleased, and didn’t at all dislike seeing me reduced to this pitiful state. When I was involuntarily out of her sight, I used to have a sort of craving for poetry and often wished that I had spent a little more time over such matters. I got Joe to lend me the key of the cupboard where he kept his library, hoping to find something to suit me there. But, besides a few old folios of divinity and travel, and some cookery books, and the Farmer’s Magazine, there was nothing but Watts’s Hymns and Pollock’s Course of Time, which I didn’t find of any use to me.