The String of Pearls (1850), p. 226

"I always thought you did, my dear, and I'm sure, if you had been an angel out of Heaven, my poor boy could not have thought more of you than he did. There was nothing that you said or did that was not excellent. He loved the ground you walked on; and a little old worsted mitten, that you left at our place once, he used to wear round his neck, and kiss it when he thought no one was nigh, and say—'This was my Minna's!'"
The young girl let her head rest upon her hands, and sobbed convulsively.
"Lost—lost!" she said, "and poor, kind, good Tobias is lost!"
"No, my dear, it's a long lane that hasn't a turning. Pluck up your courage,
and your courage will pluck up you. Keep sixpence in one pocket, and hope in
another. When things are at the worst they mend, You can't get further down
in a well than the bottom."
Minna sobbed on.
"And so, my dear," added Mrs. Ragg, "I do know something more of Tobias."
The young girl looked up.
"He lives!—he lives!"
"Lor a mussy, don't lay hold of a body so. Of course he lives, and, what's more, the doctor says that you ought to see him—he's up stairs."
"Here?—here?"
"Yes, to be sure. That's why I brought you to tea."
Minna Gray took a fit of trembling, and then, making great efforts to compose
herself, she said—
"Tell me all—tell me all!"
"Well, my dear, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and so here I am, cook in as good a place as mortal woman would wish to have. I can't tell you all the rights of the story, because I don't know it. But certainly Tobias is up stairs in bed like a gentleman, only they say as his brains is—is something or another that makes him not understand anything or anybody, and so you see the doctor says if you speak to him, who knows but what he may come to himself?"
With an intuitive tact that belongs to some minds, and which Minna Gray,
despite the many disadvantages of her social position, possessed in an eminent
degree, she understood at once the whole affair. Tobias was suffering from some
aberration of intellect, which the voice and the presence of one whom he loved
fondly might dissipate. Would she shrink from the trial?—would her delicacy take the alarm and overcome her great desire to recover Tobias? Oh, no; she loved him with a love that far outstripped all smaller feelings, and, if ever there was a time when that love took complete possession of her heart, it was at this affecting moment, when she was told that her voice might have the magic power of calling back to him the wandering reason that harshness and ill-usage had for a time toppled from its throne.
"Take me to him!" she cried—"take me to him! If all that is wanted to recover him be the voice of affection, he will soon be as he was once to us."
"Well, my dear, take your tea, and go and speak to the kernel."
It was now time for Colonel Jeffery mid his friend, the captain, to retire
from the pantry, where we need not say that they had been pleased and
affected listeners to what had passed between Mrs. Ragg and the fair and
intelligent Minna Gray, who, in beauty and intelligence, far exceeded their
utmost expectations.