How different the days would have been for the moody lad, who had at last learnt to champion her, if their common isolation and dependence had but brought out in her towards him anything clinging--anything confidential, any true spirit of comradeship! On the contrary, while she was still ill in bed, and almost absolutely dependent on what he might choose to do for her, she gibed and flouted him past bearing, mainly, no doubt, for the sake of breaking the tedium of her confinement a little.

And when she was about again, and he was defending her weakness from Aunt Hannah, it seemed to him that she viewed his proceedings rather with a malicious than a grateful eye.

It amused and excited her to see him stand up to Hannah, but he got little reward from her for his pains.
She was, as it were, always watching him with a sort of secret discontent.

He did not suit her--was not congenial to her.
Especially was she exasperated now more than ever by his bookish tastes.

Possibly she was doubly jealous of his books; at any rate, unless he had been constantly on his guard, she would have hidden them, or done them a mischief whenever she could, in her teasing, magpie way.
One morning, in the grey summer dawn, Louie had just wakened, and was staring sleepily at the door, when, all of a sudden, it opened--very quietly, as though pushed by some one anxious not to make a noise--and Reuben's head looked round it.