"That's right," said Dr. Osborne. "I knew you almost before you came into the world, and that gives me some right to your confidence. Now, then, are you happy at Woolgreaves?"
Marian hesitated a moment before she replied: "Happier than I thought I could have been--yet."
"Ah, that's right, and straightforward. Mind, in all these questions I'm alluding to you, not to your mother. I know her--charming lady, affectionate, and all that, but clinging and unreasoning, likes to lie where she falls, and so on; whereas you've got a head on your shoulders, finely developed and--so on. Now, are they all kind to you at Woolgreaves? Old gentleman kind?"
"Most kind!"
"Of course he is. Never was a man so full of heart as he is. If he had only been at home when your poor father--ah, well, that's no matter now."
"What's that you said, Dr. Osborne--that about my father?"
"Stupid old fool to go blundering into such a subject! Why couldn't I have let it alone? 'Let the dead past bury its dead.' What's that I've heard my girl sing?" the old gentleman muttered to himself. Then aloud, "Nothing, my dear. I was only thinking that if Mr. Creswell had been at home just at the time I dare say we might have made some arrangement, and had Godby down from St. Vitus, and then----"
"And then my father need not have died for the want of a hundred and thirty guineas! Oh, don't think I forget." And there came into the girl's face the hard, stony, rigid look which Dr. Osborne remembered there so well on the night of her father's death, six months before.
"Well," said the little doctor, laying the whip across his knee and blowing his nose so loudly that the pony shied at the noise--"well, well, dear, Mr. Creswell's absence at that particular time was, to say the least of it, unfortunate; we may say that. Now, what about the girls; are they kind?"
"Very, in their way."