Her narrative was childlike in its insight. What could have moved her to so confide in a stranger—and a workman? In truth, she needed little moving—her nature was to trust everybody, but there were not many to whom she could talk. Miss Brown helped her with no response. To her parents she had no desire to speak. The young people she met were appalled at the least allusion to the wild ways of her past life in New Zealand, making her feel she was not one of them. Even Arthur Lestrange had more than once looked awkward at a remark she happened to make.

So instead of confiding in any of them, that is, letting her heart go in search of theirs, she had taken to amusing them. In this she had succeeded so thoroughly as to be liked by everyone. But it did not make her happy. It did not light up the world within her.

Hence it was no great wonder that, being such as she was, she should feel drawn to Richard. He was the first young man she had even begun to respect. In her humility she found him every way her superior. It was wonderful to her that he should know so much about books, the way people made them, what they meant, and how mistakes got into them, and went from one generation to another—they were his very friends! She thought it was his love for books that had made him a bookbinder, as indeed it was his love for them that had made him a book-mender.

Her heart and mind were free from many social prejudices. She knew that people looked down upon men who did things with their hands, but she had done so many things with her own hands, and been so much obliged to others who could do things with their hands better than she, that she felt the superiority of such whose hands were their own perfect servants, and ready to help others as well.

One of the habits which most wounded the sense of propriety in those about her was Barbara’s talking about things they felt ought to be kept private. Now Barbara could keep a joyful secret, but a misery was not a nice thing to hide inside—she must get rid of it.

She soon found, however, that it was no relief to talk to Arthur or his sister or the governesses. But the bookbinder was different. He was not what people called a gentleman. But he was a man who spoke out what he meant. He was such a gentlemanly workman!

Of course he could not be a gentleman in England, but there ought to be someplace where Richard could be a gentleman just as he was, without having to be born one. She was sure he would not laugh at her behind her back, and she was not sure that Arthur or Theodora would not do that. Even more, he was ready to open for her the door into the rich chamber of his knowledge. Could it be that such a workman was a better and greater kind of man than a gentleman?