And Dorothea was magnificent. Thomasin had not known it was possible to admire someone so much and be so frightened for her. On the second morning Lord Carrowby took her down to see the new bridge, and Thomasin, walking twenty yards behind with Lady Anne, heard her talk for half a mile about drainage and stone and the price of lime at Berwick, with a knowledge that made the steward, who had come with them, look at her sidelong with something close to alarm. And when the Earl, in the evenings, turned to her and spoke—carefully, almost shyly, as a man speaks a password he is not sure is still good—of the bell, or the pears, or the coat, she answered him, every time, with the very words.
That was the trouble. She answered with the very words. Thomasin, watching across the drawing room, saw him hear it: saw his face, which had lifted at the start of each reply, settle a little at the end of it, like a man who has been handed back his own letter and told it is a gift.
"You remember everything I write," he said once, on the fourth evening.
"I've a good memory, my lord," said Dorothea. "Papa says it's the best in Yorkshire."
"It is," said Mr. Ackroyd from his chair. "She could tell you the price of a tod of wool at Halifax market in the year eight, and she was ten years old."
The Earl smiled and said that was remarkable. He did not raise the pears again.
Lady Anne, in those four days, ran the house like a regiment, and was kind to Dorothea, and sought out Thomasin—quietly, without appearing to—as though she had been told to keep an eye on her and was too well-bred to make a business of it.
On the third afternoon they walked together in the walled garden, which was nothing yet but black earth and the grey fans of espaliered pears against the south wall.
"They never ripen," said Lady Anne, stopping in front of them. "My grandmother planted them. Every year we pick them hard and every year Mrs. Thewlis stews them, and every year my brother says they're excellent, which they are not." She was looking at the trees, not at Thomasin. "I've thought sometimes that a good deal of what people call happiness is only that. Stewing hard pears. And not minding."
Thomasin could not have spoken if the house had been on fire. Lady Anne went on looking at the pears.
"Do you like it here, Miss Bramley?"
"Very much, my lady."