Ermine laughed and looked interested, not quite knowing what other answer to make. Rachel lifted up her eyebrows in amazement.
“Another advantage,” added Alick, who somehow seemed to accept Ermine as one of the family, “is, that he is no impediment to Bessie’s living there, for, poor man, he has a wife, but insane.”
“Then your sister will live there?” said Rachel. “What an enviable position, to have the control of means of doing good that always falls to the women of a clerical family.”
“Tell her so,” said the brother, with his odd, suppressed smile.
“What, she does not think so?”
“Now,” said Mr. Keith, leaning back, “on my answer depends whether Bessie enters this place with a character for chanting, croquet, or crochet. Which should you like worst, Miss Curtis?”
“I like evasions worst of all,” said Rachel, with a flash of something like playful spirit, though there was too much asperity in it.
“But you see, unfortunately, I don’t know,” said Alick Keith, slowly. “I have never been able to find out, nor she either. I don’t know what may be the effect of example,” he added. Ermine wondered whether he were in mischief or earnest, and suspected a little of both.
“I shall be very happy to show Miss Keith any of my ways,” said Rachel, with no doubts at all; “but she will find me terribly impeded here. When does she come?”
“Not for a month or six weeks, when the wedding will be over. It is high time she saw something of her respected guardian.”