"Why not?"
"She says such horrid things." He had not yet forgiven Mrs. Hankey for her gloomy prophecies respecting Elisabeth.
"Not horrid, Chris. She is rather stupid sometimes, and doesn't know when things are funny; but she never means to be really horrid, I am sure."
"Well, I think she is an old cat," persisted Christopher.
"The only thing I don't like about her is her gloves," added Elisabeth thoughtfully; "they are so old they smell of biscuit. Isn't it funny that old gloves always smell of biscuit. I wonder why?"
"I think they do," agreed Christopher; "but nobody except you would ever have thought of saying it. You have a knack of saying what everybody else is thinking; and that is what makes you so amusing."
"I'm glad you think I'm amusing; but I can't see much funniness in just saying what is true."
"Well, I can't explain why it is funny; but you really are simply killing sometimes," said Christopher graciously.
The next day, and on many succeeding ones, Elisabeth duly visited Jemima Stubbs and the invalid boy, although Christopher entreated her not to worry herself about them, and offered to go in her place. But he failed to understand that Elisabeth was goaded by no depressing sense of duty, as he would have been in similar circumstances; she went because pity was a passion with her, and therefore she was always absorbingly interested in any one whom she pitied. Strength and success and such-like attributes never appealed to Elisabeth, possibly because she herself was strong, and possessed all the qualities of the successful person; but weakness and failure were all-powerful in enlisting her sympathy and interest and, through these, her love. As Christopher grew older he dreamed dreams of how in the future he should raise himself from being only the nephew of Miss Farringdon's manager to a position of wealth and importance; and how he should finally bring all his glories and honours and lay them at Elisabeth's feet. His eyes were not opened to see that Elisabeth would probably turn with careless laughter from all such honours thus manufactured into her pavement; but if he came to her bent and bruised and brokenhearted, crushed with failure instead of crowned with success, her heart would never send him empty away, but would go out to him with a passionate longing to make up to him for all that he had missed in life.
A few days after Mrs. Bateson's tea-party he said to Elisabeth, for about the twentieth time: