asked him how he was, he would smile, and say, 'better;' but now he shakes his head, and only bends more closely over his old plants. It must be dull to watch the dark house-tops and the flying clouds for so many months; but he is very patient."
"Is there nobody in the house to cheer or help him?" asked Nicholas.
"His father lives there I believe," replied Tim, "and other people too; but no one seems to care much for the poor sickly cripple. I have asked him very often if I can do nothing for him; his answer is always the same,—'Nothing.' His voice has grown weak of late, but I can see that he makes the old reply. He can't leave his bed now, so they have moved it close beside the window, and there he lies all day: now looking at the sky, and now at his flowers, which he still makes shift to trim and water with his own thin hands. At night, when he sees my candle, he draws back his curtain, and leaves it so till I am in bed. It seems such company to him to know that I am there, that I often sit at my window for an hour and more, that he may see I am still awake; and sometimes I get up in the night to look at the dull melancholy light in his little room, and wonder whether he is awake or sleeping.
The night will not be long coming," said Tim, "when he will sleep and never wake again on earth. We have never so much as shaken hands in all our lives; and yet I shall miss him like an old friend. Are there any country flowers that could interest me like these, do you think? Or do you suppose that the withering of a hundred kinds of the choicest flowers that blow, called by the hardest Latin names that were ever invented, would give me one fraction of the pain that I shall feel when these old jugs and bottles are swept away as lumber? Country!" cried Tim, w4th a contemptuous emphasis; "don't you know that I couldn't have such a court under my bed-room window anywhere but in London?"
With which inquiry, Tim turned his back, and pretending to be absorbed in his accounts, took an opportunity of hastily wiping his eyes when he supposed Nicholas was looking another way.
Whether it was that Tim's accounts were more than usually intricate that morning, or whether it was that his habitual serenity had been a little disturbed by these recollections, it so happened that when Nicholas returned from executing some commission, and inquired whether Mr. Charles Cheeryble was alone in his room, Tim promptly, and without the smallest hesitation, replied in the affirmative, although somebody had passed into the room not ten minutes before, and Tim took especial and particular pride in preventing any intrusion on either of the brothers when they were engaged with any visitor whatever.
"I'll take this letter to him at once," said Nicholas, "if that's the case." And with that he walked to the room and knocked at the door.
No answer.
Another knock and still no answer.
"He can't be here," thought Nicholas. "I'll lay it on his table."
So Nicholas opened the door and walked in; and very quickly he turned to walk out again, when he saw to his great astonishment and
