'I should be an ungrateful girl indeed, if I were. No, Chris. I love to hear you speak to me as you have done. I was only thinking that I wished others were like you.'
'You mean uncle Bryan,' I said, with a quick apprehension of the direction of her thoughts. 'But he takes pains to make people dislike him. Besides, he is at war with everything--he is, Jessie! He never goes to church; he never opens a Bible. I believe,' I added, my voice sinking to a whisper, 'that he is an atheist.' (And I said to myself mentally, as I gazed into Jessie's sweet face, If he does not believe in God, it is less strange that he does not believe in you.')
I had given no thought to time, and now, when the church bells struck one o'clock, I was startled at the lateness of the hour. With a guilty look at each other, Jessie and I hurried home; before I could knock at the street-door, it was opened for us by my mother. She put her finger to her lips.
'I heard your steps, my dear,' she said, with anxious tenderness; 'hush, don't make a noise. You might wake your uncle.'
'We had no idea of the time, mother,' I said; 'it isn't Jessie's fault. I kept her talking, and really thought it was no more than eleven o'clock. I am so sorry we have kept you up! See what a lovely night it is.'
We stood at the door for a little while, my mother in the centre, with her arms round our waists. When she kissed me and wished me good-night, I saw that she had been crying; but her pale face brightened as I put my arms about her neck, and held her to me for a few moments. When I released her, I found that we were alone; Jessie must have stepped upstairs very quietly, for I did not hear her leave the room.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
TURK, THE FIRST VILLAIN.
Of all the male members of the West family, Turk was the one I liked best. Our intimacy soon ripened into friendship, and he made me the confidant of his woes, and as I was a good listener, we got on admirably together. It seemed that he had never had 'a chance,' as he termed it, and that he had been condemned by fate to act a line of business which he declared was distasteful to him--although I must confess that my after experience of him convinced me that it was exactly suited to him, and he to it--and in theatres where the intellectual discernment of the audiences was proverbially of a low standard.
'Perhaps you will tell me,' he said to me, in one of our private conferences, 'what there is in my appearance that I should have been selected to play the first villain almost from my birth--from my birth, sir, Chris, my boy. Do I look like a murderer? Do I look like a man who had passed through a career of the deepest-dyed ruffianism, and was eager to go on with it? Speak your mind--it won't hurt me; I'm used to criticism, and I know what value to place upon it.'