"She doesn't eat with her knife," the doctor responded hopefully. "Therefore she must be evolving just a very little."
"How do you know?"
"Because she used to—evidently. That type always does."
Olive laughed.
"Father, I don't believe you ever have really admired Mrs. Brenton," she said.
"No." The doctor spoke with slow decision. "There is no especial reason that I should. She is a totally brainless little cus—"
"Father!"
The doctor shot one expressive glance at his horrified daughter. Then, with exceeding deliberation, he continued his interrupted word.
"—tomer, and her only place in the moral universe is to act as a leech on Brenton's nervous system. The worst of it is, when her beneficent work is ended, he'll find out that he is powerless to shake her off. It's enough, the watching them, I mean, to make one believe in a tentative marriage system, at least within the rural districts. The bumpkin comes up to marriageable age, and takes the first—"
"Father!" Olive remonstrated once more. "Mr. Brenton isn't a bumpkin. He never was."