God bless you!" He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our candles, and said, "Oh! I have been looking at the weather-cock.

I find it was a false alarm about the wind.

It's in the south!" And went away singing to himself.
Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate any one.

We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him through that mingled feeling.

Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr.
Skimpole or in Mrs.Jellyby I could not expect to be able to reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge.
Neither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed to receive concerning them.