At first he slighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least he was taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person with whom he had nothing in common.

This person, however, improved on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging tolerance, even an undemonstrative respect, for him.

Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, and our young man, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter--it usually struck him as his reputation for ordinary wit--devoted to his graceless charge an amount of attention of which note was duly taken and which had at least the effect of keeping the poor fellow alive.

One of his lungs began to heal, the other promised to follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather a dozen winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which consumptives chiefly congregate.

As he had grown extremely fond of London, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time that he cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ grateful even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter hand.
He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped at home when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when it had snowed overnight, almost never got up again.
A secret hoard of indifference--like a thick cake a fond old nurse might have slipped into his first school outfit--came to his aid and helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for aught but that arduous game.