? I am sorry. I didn't think about it.«
    »I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came here -
that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds.«
    »Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don't I listen to her
willingly?«
    To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged. That
they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas,
we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the necessary materials being
at hand. It is true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but
this was a mere negative, a shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were
capable of shrinking. Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of
Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue
eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets
melted without knowing it.
    That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a process
of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his
daily notes with as much precision as usual. The reveries from which it was
difficult for him to detach himself were ideal constructions of something else
than Rosamond's virtues, and the primitive tissue was still his fair unknown.
Moreover, he was beginning to feel some zest for the growing though
half-suppressed feud between him and the other medical men, which was likely to
become more manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital
was about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his
non-acceptance by some of Peacock's patients might be counterbalanced by the
impression he had produced in other quarters. Only a few days later, when he had
happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and had got down from his horse
to walk by her side until he had quite protected her from a passing drove, he
had been stopped by a servant on horseback with a message calling him in to a
house of some importance where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second
instance of this kind. The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the house was
Lowick Manor.
 

                                 Chapter XXVIII

 1st Gent.
 All times are good to seek your wedded home
 Bringing a mutual delight.
 2d Gent.
 Why, true.
 The calendar hath not an evil day
 For souls made one by love, and even death
 Were sweetness,
