Two seconds later they met Mrs. Brownlow on the landing—-
"There, mother," said the Doctor.
"My child!" and Carey was in her arms.
"Oh, may I?-—Is it real?" said the girl in a stifled voice.
After that, they took it very quietly. Carey was so young and
ignorant of the world that she was not nearly so much overpowered as
if she had had the slightest external knowledge either of married
life, or of the exceptional thing the doctor was doing. Her mother
had died when she was three years old, and she had never since that
time lived with wedded folk, while even her companions at school
being all fatherless, she had gathered nothing of even second-hand
experience from them. All she knew was from books, which had given
glimpses into happy homes; and though she had feasted on a few novels
during this happy month, they had been very select, and chiefly
historical romance. She was at the age when nothing is impossible to
youthful dreams, and if Tancredi had come out of the Gerusalemme and
thrown himself at her feet, she would hardly have felt it more
strangely dream-like than the transformation of her kind doctor into
her own Joe: and on the other hand, she had from the first moment
nestled so entirely into the home that it would have seemed more
unnatural to be torn away from it than to become a part of it.
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