"I told you the first time I ever saw you that I didn't care for kissing."
"Well, even if you don't care, can't you occasionally be generous?
You've got a colour in your cheeks like red flowers."
"Oh, have I?"
"The trouble is, I've gone and fallen in love with you and it's turning my head."
"I don't think it will hurt you, Jonathan."
She broke away from him before he could detain her, and while a protest was still on his lips, ran up the walk and under the grape arbour into the back door of the house.
Left to himself, Gay wheeled about and passed into the side-garden, where he found Kesiah snipping off withered roses with a pair of pruning shears.
At his approach, she paused in her task and stood waiting for him, with the expression of interested, if automatic, attention, which appeared on her face, as in answer to some secret spring, whenever she was invited to perform the delicate part of a listener. She had attained at last that battered yet smiling acquiescence in the will of Providence which has been eloquently praised, under different names, by both theologians and philosophers. From a long and uncomplaining submission to boredom, she had arrived at a point of blessedness where she was unable to be bored at all. Out of the furnace of a too ardent youth, her soul had escaped into the agreeable, if foggy, atmosphere of middle age. Peace had been provided for her—if not by generously presenting her with the things that she desired, still quite as effectually by crippling the energy of her desires, until they were content to sun themselves quietly in a row, like aged, enfeebled paupers along the south wall of the poorhouse.
"Aunt Kesiah," said Gay, stopping beside her, "do you think any of us understand Molly's character? Is she happy with us or not?"
It is a pleasant thing to be at the time of life, and in the possession of the outward advantages, which compel other persons to stop in the midst of their own interesting affairs and begin to inquire if they understand one's character. As Kesiah lifted a caterpillar on a leaf, and carefully laid it in the centre of the grassy walk, she thought quite cheerfully that nobody had ever wondered about her character, and that it must be rather nice to have some one do so.