Herself at the heart of the secret from which came all his utterance, she could fit herself into most of the convolutions of the shell of his expression, and was hence able also to make others perceive in his verse not a little of what they were of themselves unable to see.
"We shall have you lecturing at the Royal Institution yet, Mary," said Tom; "only it will be long before its members care for that sort of antique." Tom's insight had always been ahead of his character, and of late he had been growing.

People do grow very fast in bed sometimes.

Also he had in him plenty of material, to which a childlike desire now began to give shapes and sequences.
The musician's remark consisted in taking his violin, and once more giving his idea of the "old gentleman's" music, but this time with a richer expression and fuller harmonies.

Mary had every reason to be satisfied with her experiment.

From that time she talked a good deal more about her favorite writers, and interested both the critical taste of Tom and the artistic instinct of the blacksmith.
But Joseph's playing had great faults: how could it be otherwise ?--and to Mary great seemed the pity that genius should not be made perfect in faculty, that it should not have that redemption of its body for which unwittingly it groaned.