'
There was no impatience in the pleasant look with which Mr.
Crisparkle contemplated the pretty old piece of china as it
knitted; but there was, certainly, a humorous sense of its not
being a piece of china to argue with very closely.
'Besides, Sept, ask yourself what he would be without his sister.
You know what an influence she has over him; you know what a
capacity she has; you know that whatever he reads with you, he
reads with her. Give her her fair share of your praise, and how
much do you leave for him?'
At these words Mr. Crisparkle fell into a little reverie, in which
he thought of several things. He thought of the times he had seen
the brother and sister together in deep converse over one of his
own old college books; now, in the rimy mornings, when he made
those sharpening pilgrimages to Cloisterham Weir; now, in the
sombre evenings, when he faced the wind at sunset, having climbed
his favourite outlook, a beetling fragment of monastery ruin; and
the two studious figures passed below him along the margin of the
river, in which the town fires and lights already shone, making the
landscape bleaker. He thought how the consciousness had stolen
upon him that in teaching one, he was teaching two; and how he had
almost insensibly adapted his explanations to both minds--that with
which his own was daily in contact, and that which he only
approached through it.
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