My turn came again at last, and I carried my fern to offer to Mistress Dorothy. She looked quite bright and pleased as she took it from my hands. 'I should never have thought of bringing it to you,' said Master Caleb. He did not add what he had told me on the road, when it was too late to turn back, that it was not near good enough to give to her. But I think she liked it. She took me into the parlour to see her water it, and made me tell her about the steep bank where it had grown, under waving trees and among primrose tufts. 'Pretty place,' she said smiling. 'Won't you come and see it some day, Mistress Dorothy?' 'Father cannot get away, and I never leave him.' 'Couldn't he spare you?' She shook her head. 'Oh no, never.' 'But supposing you married and went away?' I asked. I do not know what set me on thinking of marrying just then. She coloured and smiled. 'That will never be. I could not leave him; and besides, no one will ever want to marry a little lame thing like me.' 'Won't they?' She shook her head again and laughed. That evening, as we walked down the street, Master Caleb said suddenly, 'She likes you, Willie; she says you are to come again.' 'Does she? Oh, Master Caleb, shouldn't you like to have her there at home, and let her see the Castle and all?' He put his hand on my shoulder, and said in a low, changed voice, 'If it could be, Willie, if it could. But it never can be--never.' 'She says she cannot leave her father.' 'It isn't only for that; I could never ask her. Look you, Willie; she is just as high above me as the stars.' That was how I came to know Master Caleb's secret. * * * * * It was a heavy secret to him, poor fellow, though he tried hard to put it away, and to live as if he had not got it on his mind. He told no one, not even Mrs. Janet, and only sometimes, when we were out on the hills, he talked a little of it to me. Certainly I was a very odd person for him to have chosen to hear the story of his love. But he had lived a solitary life, and perhaps his telling me had been an accident at first. Once told, no one in the world could have felt more honoured than I did, or have listened and looked on with more reverential awe. 'You're not quite like a boy in some things, you know, Willie,' he once said to me. 'Besides, she likes you.' And he never did things just as other people did. I suppose that was another reason. Mistress Dorothy and I became firm friends. I did not wonder the least at Master Caleb, for there was no one at all like her in the world. To go to Morechester and see her, I gave up willingly the best cricket match of that summer; and what boy can do more than that?