"Aren't the teachers agreeable?"
"Well, I've been there only a few days, but I see already that doctors disagree there as they do elsewhere. One comes and tells you you're all right, and the next declares you're all wrong; but I'm after the fundamental training I've never had, and I'm going to get it if I make their lives a burden to them."
"I don't pretend to know anything about art, Phil," said the hostess complacently, "and I'm not going to add that I know what I like, either, so you needn't smile at the fire; but from those sketches of yours that I saw out at the mine I could see that you were bound to accomplish something if you had free rein. Kathleen was delighted with them."
"I was much pleased to meet Miss Fabian," said Phil.
"Dear me, why should you children be so formal!" exclaimed his hostess. "'Miss Fabian'! 'Mr. Sidney'! It's ridiculous when you consider your mother and me—more like sisters than cousins as we are."
Philip bit his lip. The description struck him as diverting, considering the lapse of years during which his mother had heard nothing from this cousin.
"I shall be very glad if Miss Fabian will let me know her better," he said.
"It's a very, very strange thing, Phil," went on Mrs. Fabian, shaking her waved head and gazing at the fire, "to be a step-mother. I should have always said that environment was more powerful than heredity; but I've had those children almost from babyhood,"—the speaker challenged Phil with impressive eyes,—"and yet I look at them, yes, I assure you, I look at them as a hen might look at the ducks she had hatched."
Phil saw that he was intended to respond, so he changed his position and made a soft, inarticulate exclamation.
"Those children," declared Mrs. Fabian, "would probably both claim that they understood me from a to z; but I am frank enough to state that I understand neither of them. Now, I'm going to tell you, Phil, that I am hanging great hopes upon your influence over Edgar."