She watched happily, hands clasped in front of her in stifled glee as he ever-so-gently pulled a volume of -- that was Tennyson, and a good collection, too -- from the shelf in front of him. "I would be delighted if you were to keep that one," she said. She could tell that she was absolutely right about him and his respect for the written word. His love for words may well rival her own, if his actions were to be believed. Or perhaps he took the same amount of care with everything that he touched. The thought made her smile wider. Yes, she certainly liked this Abraham.
He'd drifted off from that last sentence, and she was about to inquire after it, but then the next question... Beauty bit her lip.
"W... Well," she said carefully, glancing over her shoulder to the mantle. A note was still tented there, a note left for her by Thomas Townsend on the occasion of his departure. The note she'd found on her door. The note explaining just what she'd find within her cottage was not a random happenstance, but a gift. She took a breath.
"You know -- of course, you know -- that the City selects some to be brought here. Sometimes it... it returns them, as well." She hadn't lifted her head. Even though it was in the past now, the pain of it still lingered. "I knew a man, a very good man... He was one of the first that I met here in the City. He helped me find my feet, and he helped me track down the remnants of my family line. He got me a job at the bookstore where he worked. He..."
She swallowed, her eyes growing tender, though the expression was lost to the floor. "He protected me from a ne'er-do-well on a night street, and... and he was dear to me. Then, one day, he was simply gone."
Beauty didn't elaborate on how the absence affected her. Perhaps the lack of explanation alone was enough. She took another bracing breath, and lifted her head. "He was gone for years. I told Thomas... that is, the City in human form... I told Thomas about Errol, and about how..."
How hard it had been. How she'd hurt from the loss...
"And when the City left its human form, it left me a note about a gift to me, thanking me for my hospitality. It was him. He was the gift, just..."
Beauty laughed and lifted her head at last. "He was just in my cottage, and... " She was beaming again. "It was... No one's given me a better gift than that."