And Mrs. Rivers, who knew what the neighbourhood thought of the good Doctor's infatuation, felt that there was not much use in suggesting how shocked the world would be at his encouragement of the intimacy between the convict and his young son. People did look surprised when the Doctor asked admission to the cell for his son as well as himself; and truly Aubrey, who in silence had worked himself into an agony of nervous agitation, looked far from fit for anything trying. Dr. May saw that he must not ask to leave the young friends alone together, but in his reverence for the rights of their friendship, he withdrew himself as far as the limits of the cell would allow, turned his back, and endeavoured to read the Thirty-nine Articles in Leonard's Prayer-Book; but in spite of all his abstraction, he could not avoid a complete consciousness that the two lads sat on the bed, clinging with arms round one another like young children, and that it was Leonard's that was the upright sustaining figure, his own Aubrey's the prone and leaning one. And of the low whispering murmurs that reached his would-be deafened ear, the gasping almost sobbing tones were Aubrey's. The first distinct words that he could not help hearing were, 'No such thing! There can't be slavery where one works with a will!' and again, in reply to something unheard, 'Yes, one can! Why, how did one do one's Greek?'--'Very different!'--'How?'--'Oh!'--'Yes; but you are a clever chap, and had her to teach you, but I only liked it because I'd got it to do. Just the same with the desk-work down at the mill; so it may be the same now.' Then came fragments of what poor Aubrey had expressed more than once at home--that his interest in life, in study, in sport, was all gone with his friend. 'Come, Aubrey, that's stuff. You'd have had to go to Cambridge, you know, without me, after I doggedly put myself at that place. There's just as much for you to do as ever there was.' 'How you keep on with your _do_!' cried Ethel's spoilt child, with a touch of petulance. 'Why, what are we come here for--into this world, I mean--but to _do_!' returned Leonard; 'and I take it, if we do it right, it does not much matter what or where it is.' 'I shan't have any heart for it!' sighed Aubrey. 'Nonsense! Not with all your people at home? and though the voice fell again, the Doctor's ears distinguished the murmur, 'Why, just the little things she let drop are the greatest help to me here, and you always have her--'