I don't know whether we could not make room for you to come and live with us--what say you to it?
Allan would be proud to tend you, I am sure; and Rosamund and I should be nice company." Margaret was all unused to such kindnesses, and wept--Margaret had a great spirit--yet she was not above accepting an obligation from a worthy person--there was a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner--she could have no interest but pure goodness, to induce her to make the offer--at length the old lady spake from a full heart.
"Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress--it gave us shelter when we had _no home_--we have praised God in it--and, while life remains, I think I shall never part from it--Rosamund does everything for me"-- "And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;"-- and then Rosamund fell a-crying.
"You are a good girl, Rosamund; and if you do but find friends when I am dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live--but God bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer." Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk.

The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she never beheld so lovely a creature.
They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together; they rambled over all Rosamund's favorite haunts--through many a sunny field--by secret glade or wood-walk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved Clare.
Who now so happy as Rosamund?
She had oft-times heard Allan speak with great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her beloved Clare.
Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some chaste endearment.

Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence.
Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with her when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested most of them by the passing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of present impulse;--her conversation did not consist in a comparison of vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it had all the freshness of young sensation in it.
Sometimes they talked of Allan.
"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to her, and try to divert her a hundred ways.

I wonder sometimes he is not tired.

She talks him to death!" "Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_ sometimes ?" "Oh no, I did not mean _that_--it's very different--I am used to all her ways, and I can humor her, and please her, and I ought to do it, for she is the only friend I ever had in the world." The new friends did not conclude their walk till it was late, and Rosamund began to be apprehensive about the old lady, who had been all this time alone.
On their return to the cottage, they found that Margaret had been somewhat impatient--old ladies, _good old ladies_, will be so at times--age is timorous and suspicious of danger, where no danger is.
Besides, it was Margaret's bedtime, for she kept very good hours--indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than might well beseem a creature of this.
So the new friends parted for that night.