I have a great deal of work to do upon that, still: you'll find one on the table by the window." She got the book, with whose contents she was considerably better acquainted than was the divinity student, and sat down to read, marveling at the oddness of the situation; while he lay apparently absorbed in the cracks on the ceiling.

By degrees--for having carried her point she could not help being more gracious--she began to allow a little embroidery of conversation to weave itself about the sacred text She spoke to Bressant about such simple and ordinary matters as went to make up her life--the books she had read, the people she knew, the country round about, a few of her more inward thoughts.

He listened, and said no more than enough to show he was attentive; sometimes making her laugh by the shrewdness of his questions, and the quaintness of his remarks.
But he said nothing more to bring a grave look into the eyes of his young nurse; and she, finding him so gentle and boyish, and withal manly and profound, chatted on with more confidence and freedom; and, being gifted with fineness and accuracy of observation, and a clear flow and order of language and ideas, made talking a delight and a profit.
There was nothing formal or didactic about Sophie, and her talk rippled forth as naturally and spontaneously as a brook trickles over its brown stones, or the over-hanging willows whisper in the wind.

There was in it the unwearied and unweariable freshness of nature.

And Sophie's vein of humor was as fine and pungent as the aroma of a lemon: it touched her words now and then, and made their flavor all the more acceptable.
So Bressant gained his end at last, though he had yielded it; and this fact was not lost upon the trained keenness of his observation.