Mrs Kingsworth, like many another parent, did not calculate on the unknown factors in the problem,—the will and the character of her own child.
Katharine grew up a merry, healthy child, sufficiently intelligent, but without the love of books, which her mother had hoped to see, with all natural instincts strong in her, and with an ardent desire to have other little girls to play with.
“Mamma, tell me how you used to go and drink tea with your cousins,”—“Mamma, do ask a little girl to come and stay here,”—“Mamma, I should like to go to Mrs Leicester’s school,” were among her earliest aspirations.
Her mother was clever and well-informed enough to educate her well, but solitary study was uninteresting to so sociable a being, and the girl was devoid of the daydreaming faculty, which while it would have given form to her desires, might have whiled away many a dreary hour. As it was, the poor child jarred her mother with every taste and turn that she developed.
High-mindedness was to be cultivated by a careful and sparing selection of poetry and romance; but this provoking Katharine at twelve years old borrowed the kitchen-maids Sunday-school prizes, and preferred them to the “Lady of the Lake.”
She thought her mother’s heroes tiresome, and with that curious instinctive resistance of strong-willed childhood to any set purpose of influence, could not be induced to care for the glorious tales of self-sacrifice and noble poverty which still made her mother’s blood thrill and her eyes brighten.
She was very carefully instructed in religious matters, and duly every Sunday attended service at Applehurst, a tiny country church with a very old-fashioned childless vicar, and one very quiet Sunday service. When Katharine was sixteen, the one event of her life took place, and her mother took her for three days to Fanchester, the cathedral city, where Canon Kingsworth lived, to be confirmed.
The vicar had nominally prepared her, her mother had endeavoured earnestly to influence her. Surely the first sight of the glorious cathedral, the solemn service, would awaken in the girl that tone of mind in which she now seemed so deficient.
But to Katharine the railway journey, the town, the people were a dream, or rather, a reality of delight.
“We will take Katharine over the cathedral to-day, that it may not be quite strange to her to-morrow,” said the Canon’s wife on the first morning.