"I don't know why you are in such a hurry, Cyril; it is the day for the library to be cleaned, so you cannot use it yet. The whole business is most inopportune; why should he break his leg in Ivingdon, when he might have done it quite conveniently in the county town, and been taken to the infirmary like any one else?"
The Rector wondered vaguely why his room was cleaned more than once a week; but he sat down again and folded his hands, and said that he was of the same opinion as before and saw no reason why the unfortunate young man should not be nursed by Miss Esther.
"No more do I," said Katharine. "What's the difference between nursing Shepherd Horne through bronchitis and nursing Mr. Wilton with a broken leg, except that Mr. Wilton is presumably not so unwashed? I never can see why the poor people should have the monopoly of impropriety, as well as of the Scriptures. Besides, you can easily reduce him to the level of a villager by reading the Psalms to him every day. That would make you feel quite proper, wouldn't it, auntie? And I dare say he wouldn't mind it much, when he got used to it."
"Your profanity," said her aunt severely, "is becoming perfectly outrageous. If you were sometimes to say a few words of reproof to your own daughter, Cyril, instead of dreaming your life away—but there, I must go and look after poor Mr. Wilton! I wonder whether he likes his eggs boiled or scrambled?" she added doubtfully. For Miss Esther was one of those women who reserve the best side of their nature for the people who have no real claim upon them; and she took little interest in any one who was neither poor nor afflicted. The unpractical temperament of the Rector both astonished and chafed her, and she had nothing but a fretful endurance for her high-spirited niece, in whom a natural longing for action and an inordinate sense of humour were fast producing a spirit of revolt and cynicism. But an invalid, who was thus thrown suddenly into her power, appealed strongly to the Rector's sister; and her diffidence had entirely disappeared by the time she had gone through all the objections that propriety impelled her to raise.
"I feel quite thankful," she said, smiling blandly, "that the poor fellow has fallen into such good hands."
"So do I," remarked Katharine, as the door closed. "It will be all the better for your paper on the local antiquities, won't it, daddy? Daddy dear, just think of all the time we shall have to ourselves, now that she's got Mr. Wilton on her hands! Poor Mr. Wilton! Let's come and clear Dorcas out of the library and look at what you've done, shall we? Come along, daddy, quick!"
The Rector stroked her long hair, with a doubtful look on his face.
"I am afraid, Kitty, I do not look after you as I should," he said. "I am a bad old sinner, eh?"
"That's why I love you so. You are a brick!" exclaimed Katharine.