“My uncle is sorry, Miss Lingard, that he cannot come to see your brother to-day, but he is laid up with an attack of asthma. He wished Mr. Lingard to know that he was thinking of him:--shall I tell you just what he said?” Helen bent her neck: she did not feel much interest in the matter. But Leopold said, “Every word of such a good man is precious: tell me, please.” Rachel turned to him with the flush of a white rose on her face. “I asked him, sir--‘Shall I tell him you are praying for him?’ and he said, ‘No. I am not exactly praying for him, but I am thinking of God and him together.’” The tears rose in Leopold’s eyes. Rachel lifted her baby-hand, and stroked the dusky, long-fingered one that lay upon the arm of the chair. “Dear Mr. Lingard,” she said,--Helen stopped in the middle of an embroidery stitch, and gave her a look as if she were about to ask for her testimonials--“I could well wish, if it pleased God, that I were as near home as you.” Leopold took her hand in his. “Do you suffer then?” he said. “Just look at me,” she answered with a smile that was very pitiful, though she did not mean it for such, “--shut up all my life in this epitome of deformity! But I ain’t grumbling: that would be a fine thing! My house is not so small but God can get into it. Only you can’t think how tired I often am of it.” “Mr. Wingfold was telling me yesterday that some people fancy St. Paul was little and misshapen, and that that was his thorn in the flesh.” “I don’t think that can be true, or he would never have compared his body to a tabernacle, for, oh dear! it won’t stretch an inch to give a body room. I don’t think either, if that had been the case, he would have said he didn’t want it taken off, but another put over it. I do want mine taken off me, and a downright good new one put on instead--something not quite so far off your sister’s there, Mr. Lingard. But I’m ashamed of talking like this. It came of wanting to tell you I can’t be sorry you are going when I should so dearly like to go myself.” “And I would gladly stay a while, and that in a house no bigger than yours, if I had a conscience of the same sort in my back-parlour,” said Leopold smiling. “But when I am gone the world will be the cleaner for it.--Do you know about God the same way your uncle does, Miss Polwarth?”