This crowning sorrow in the family wrought more cordial feelings.

Crabbe was one of those who had known and been kind to their child, and such were now, "Peculiar people--death had made them dear." And henceforth the engagement between the lovers was frankly accepted.
But though the course of this true love was to run more and more smooth, the question of Crabbe's future means of living seemed as hopeless of solution as ever.
And yet the enforced idleness of these following years was far from unprofitable.

The less time occupied in the routine work of his profession, the more leisure he had for his favourite study of natural history, and especially of botany.

This latter study had been taken up during his stay at Woodbridge, the neighbourhood of which had a Flora differing from that of the bleak coast country of Aldeburgh, and it was now pursued with the same zeal at home.

Herbs then played a larger part than to-day among curative agents of the village doctor, and the fact that Crabbe sought and obtained them so readily was even pleaded by his poorer patients as reason why his fees need not be calculated on any large scale.