"I shall want to rob you of Rosamund's company now and then, if we like one another. I had hoped to have seen _you_, madam, at our house. I don't know whether we could not make room for you to come and live with us--what say you to it? Allan would be proud to tend you, I am sure; and Rosamund and I should be nice company." Margaret was all unused to such kindnesses, and wept--Margaret had a great spirit--yet she was not above accepting an obligation from a worthy person--there was a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner--she could have no interest but pure goodness, to induce her to make the offer--at length the old lady spake from a full heart. "Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress--it gave us shelter when we had _no home_--we have praised God in it--and, while life remains, I think I shall never part from it--Rosamund does everything for me"-- "And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;"--and then Rosamund fell a-crying. "You are a good girl, Rosamund; and if you do but find friends when I am dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live--but God bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer." Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she never beheld so lovely a creature. They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together; they rambled over all Rosamund's favorite haunts--through many a sunny field--by secret glade or wood-walk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved Clare. Who now so happy as Rosamund? She had oft-times heard Allan speak with great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her beloved Clare. Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some chaste endearment. Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence. Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with her when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested most of them by the passing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of present impulse;--her conversation did not consist in a comparison of vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it had all the freshness of young sensation in it. Sometimes they talked of Allan. "Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is not tired. She talks him to death!" "Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_ sometimes?"