Miss Charlotte smiled serenely, and regarded me with a look of much sweet kindliness.
"You're a fearful heathen, Ruth," was her response, "but you have a fine wheedling way with you. Couldn't you persuade her she's too young to think about such things?"
"I've tried something of the kind, but she says she is not too young to die. She is like a child out of an old memoir. She isn't of our time at all. We read of that sort of a girl, but I supposed they all died a hundred years ago."
"I doubt if there ever were such girls," Miss Charlotte returned with candor; "except once in a very great while. I think the girls of the memoirs were very much like the rest of us most of the time. They probably had spells of being like Kathie. The difference is that she is at boiling point all the time."
"Of course it's her father," I said thoughtfully.
"Yes," she assented. "He's such a rampant Methodist."
I could not help the shadow of a smile, and when she saw it Miss Charlotte could no more help smiling in her turn.
"Of course you think it's a case of the pot's calling the kettle black," she said, "but the Methodists do make such a business of frightening folks out of their wits. We don't do that."
I let this pass, and asked if she couldn't make some practical suggestion for the treatment of Kathie.