"I shall miss her very much. To find anybody who will fall into my ways may be difficult. When I was younger, I used to like training a domestic. I found it was better to rule by love than fear. You may lose here and there, but you gain more than you lose. Human character is really not so profoundly difficult, if you resolutely try to see life from the other person's standpoint. That done, you can help them—and yourself through them."
"People who show you their edges, instead of their rounds, are not at all agreeable," said Miss Ironsyde. "To conquer the salients of character is often a very formidable task."
"It is," he admitted, "yet I have found the comfortable, convex and concave characters often really more difficult in the long run. You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best friends with the debris."
He chattered on until a fit of coughing stopped him.
"You mustn't talk so much," warned Estelle. "It's lovely to hear you talking again; but it isn't good for you, yet."
Then she turned to Miss Ironsyde.
"The first time I came in and found him reading a book catalogue, I knew he was going to be all right."
"By the same token another gift has reached me," he answered; "a book on the bells of Devon, which I have long wanted to possess."
"I'm sure it is not such a perfect book as yours."
"Indeed it is—very excellently done. The bell mottoes in Devonshire are worthy of all admiration. But a great many of the bells in ancient bell-chambers are crazed—a grave number. People don't think as much of a ring of bells in a parish as they used to do."