Mousey explained the matter, whilst Mr. Harding listened with a scornful expression on his countenance, which gave place to astonishment when the little girl informed him how John was afraid of being laughed at and considered a hypocrite.
"You don't think him a hypocrite, do you?" she inquired anxiously. "I'm sure he's a nice boy. See how kind he is helping me with my lessons of an evening; and he's very good-natured. He'll fetch coal for Maria, and clean the knives, and—"
"So he ought!" Mr. Harding interrupted briskly. "That's what I keep him for, to make him generally useful about the place. You don't think I took him out of the workhouse for any other reason, I suppose?"
"I thought you took him because you wanted to be kind to him," Mousey responded simply, "just as you took me, Cousin Robert, because he had no mother or father, or anyone to care for him."
"Humph!" said Mr. Harding, frowning, "then you thought wrong! I have no interest in John Monday beyond getting the work out of him to pay me for his bed and board. He suits me well enough. As to you—"
He paused abruptly, his keen eyes softening as they rested on the child's face.
"As for you," he continued, "I offered you a home because I always respected your mother, and you are like her in appearance."
"Do you really think so?" Mousey asked joyfully. "I want so much to be like her, but I am afraid I shall never, never be so good as she was."
"You are like her in appearance," Mr. Harding repeated, "or I should say, like what she was at your age. I knew her as a child when she used to be very fond of her Cousin Robert. Did she ever mention me to you?"
"Yes, sometimes," the little girl responded; "once she told me you were very rich."