She embarked upon a windy dissertation about a cat she had once taken charge of for some one, and the trouble and expense this ungrateful animal had caused her.
“But you can’t chain up a cat,” she explained. “People are so selfish. They never consider how they trespass on one’s kindness.”
“If service called for no sacrifice it would not be kindness,” Mr Musgrave replied sententiously.
“Ah, how true that is!” exclaimed Miss Simpson. “You have such a comprehensive way of putting things. One ought to be kind, of course.”
“I think,” he replied with emphasis, “if the desire to be kind is lacking, it is just as well to leave it alone.”
“Yes,” she acquiesced flatly. “That’s true, too. But we most of us desire to be kind, don’t we?”
“No,” he returned in his bluntest manner; he was feeling too annoyed to wish to be civil. “I fancy in the majority of us that desire is a negligible quantity.”
“But not in you,” she said insinuatingly.
“In me most pronouncedly,” he asserted with conviction.
If this quality were not lacking in himself in a general sense he knew at that moment it was most assuredly lacking in relation to her. Mr Musgrave, having been guilty of ungraciousness, was immediately ashamed of his irritation, and during the remainder of the walk he sought to atone for his former discourtesy by a greater amiability than Miss Simpson was accustomed to from him—a mistaken form of kindness which led to the encouragement of all manner of false hopes in Miss Simpson’s maiden mind.