They said you were in bed yesterday." (Then he HAD been inquiring for me!) "Ought you to be standing at the door this cold day ?" "It's quite warm," I said, looking up at the sunshine, and shivering.
"Please go in." "If you'll come too." He nodded, then put his arm round mine, and helped me in, as if he had been a big elder brother, and I a little ailing child.

Well nursed and carefully guarded as I had always been, it was the first time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing, tenderness.

A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness, or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest found in men.

John Halifax had it more than any one, woman or man, that I ever knew.
"I'm glad you're better," he said, and said no more.

But one look of his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other people.
"And how have you been, John?
How do you like the tan-yard?
Tell me frankly." He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily, "Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread.