Arthur Mervyn, page 409 by Charles Brockden Brown
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o I have done nothing. All the service is on your side. Your conversation has been my study, a delightful study, but the profit has only been mine. Tell me how I can be grateful: my voice and manner, I believe, seldom belie my feelings." At this time, I had almost done what a second thought made me suspect to be unauthorized. Yet I cannot tell why. My heart had nothing in it but reverence and admiration. Was she not the substitute of my lost mamma? Would I not have clasped that beloved shade? Yet the two beings were not just the same, or I should not, as now, have checked myself, and only pressed her hand to my lips.
"Tell me," repeated I, "what can I do to serve you? I read to you a little now, and you are pleased with my reading. I copy for you when you want the time. I guide the reins for you when you choose to ride. Humble offices, indeed, though, perhaps, all that a raw youth like me can do for you; but I can be still more assiduous. I can read several hours in the day, instead of one. I can write ten times as much as now.
"Are you not my lost mamma come back again? And yet, not exactly her, I think. Something different; something better, I believe, if that be possible. At any rate, methinks I would be wholly yours. I shall be impatient and uneasy till every act, every thought, every minute, someway does you good.
"How!" said I, (her eye, still averted, seemed to hold back the tear with difficulty, and she made a motion as if to rise,) "have I grieved you? Have I been importunate? Forgive me if I have offended you."
Her eyes now overflowed without restraint. She articulated, with difficulty, "Tears are too prompt with me of late; but they did not upbraid you. Pain has often caused them to flow, but now it--is--pleasure."
"What a heart must yours be!" I resumed. "When susceptible of such pleasures, what pangs must formerly have rent it!--But you are not displeased, you say, with my importunate zeal. You will accept me as your own in every thing. Direct