to do a turn of work not legitimately its own, though mathematically
exact in its proper office. But after I came here with my sister, a
helpless cripple, we found out that the mathematical machine was a man,
with a soft, beating heart. He was called upon to lift me from the
carriage, and he did it as tenderly as a woman. He took me up as a
mother lifts her child from the cradle, and I reposed passively in his
strong arms, with a feeling of perfect security and ease.

From that day to this, Ben has been a most devoted friend to me. He
watches for opportunities to do me kindnesses, and takes from his own
sacred time to make me comforts. He has had me in his arms a hundred
times, and carries me from bed to couch like a baby. I positively blush
in writing this to you. You have known me to be a man for years, and
here I am in arms again!

Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts
to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor
fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't like to recall his
sufferings.

The first I knew of it was by his starting and changing color one day,
when I was reading the news from China to Kate in the garden, he being
engaged in tying up a rose-bush close by. Kate saw his confusion, and
smiled. Ben, catching the expression of her face, looked inconceivably
sheepish. He dropped his ball of twine, and was about to go away, but
thinking better of it, he suddenly turned and said, with a grin and a
blush,--

"Ye'll be telling on me, Miss Kathleen! so I'se be aforehond wi' ye, and
let Mr. Charlie knaw the warst frae my ain confassion, if he will na