Two seconds later they met Mrs. Brownlow on the landing—-

“There, mother,” said the Doctor.

“My child!” and Carey was in her arms.

“Oh, may I?-—Is it real?” said the girl in a stifled voice.

After that, they took it very quietly.  Carey was so young and ignorant of the world that she was not nearly so much overpowered as if she had had the slightest external knowledge either of married life, or of the exceptional thing the doctor was doing.  Her mother had died when she was three years old, and she had never since that time lived with wedded folk, while even her companions at school being all fatherless, she had gathered nothing of even second-hand experience from them.  All she knew was from books, which had given glimpses into happy homes; and though she had feasted on a few novels during this happy month, they had been very select, and chiefly historical romance.  She was at the age when nothing is impossible to youthful dreams, and if Tancredi had come out of the Gerusalemme and thrown himself at her feet, she would hardly have felt it more strangely dream-like than the transformation of her kind doctor into her own Joe:  and on the other hand, she had from the first moment nestled so entirely into the home that it would have seemed more unnatural to be torn away from it than to become a part of it.  As to her being an extraordinary and very disadvantageous choice for him, she simply knew nothing of the matter; she was used to passiveness as to her own destiny, and now that she did indeed “belong to somebody” she let those somebodies think and decide for her with the one certainty that what Mr. Brownlow and his mother liked was sure to be the truly right and happy thing.

So, instead of being alarmed and scrupulous, she was sweetly, shyly, and yet confidingly gay and affectionate, enchanting both her companions, but revealing by her naive questions and remarks such utter ignorance of all matters of common life that Mrs. Brownlow had no scruples in not stirring the question, that had never occurred to her son or his little betrothed, namely, her own retirement.  Caroline needed a mother far too much for her to be spared.

What was to be done about Miss Heath?  It was due to her for Miss Allen to offer to return till her place could be supplied, Mrs. Brownlow said—-but that was only to tease the lovers—-for a quarter, at which Joe made a snarling howl, whereat Carey ventured to laugh at him, and say she should come home for every Sunday, as Miss Pinniwinks, the senior governess, did.

“Come home,-—it is enough to say that,” she added.

Mrs. Brownlow undertook to negotiate the matter, her son saying privately—-

“Get her off, if you have to advance a quarter.  I’d rather do anything than send her back for even a week, to have all manner of nonsense put into her head.  I’d sooner go and teach there myself.”

“Or send me?” asked his mother.