“A little brusque, a little unpolished, perhaps, but a thoroughly honest fellow, without hypocrisy and without affectation. The sort of man one instinctively feels that one can trust.”
And Mrs. Abercarne crossed the room to the fireside, and settled herself comfortably in an easy chair, with her feet on the fender-stool.
Then Chris, perceiving that there was some occult meaning in all this, replied discreetly:
“I am glad you think so well of him, mother. But I—I shouldn’t have thought he was the kind of man you would have taken such a fancy to.”
“Ah, my dear, you girls always judge by the exterior,” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, as she took up her knitting, and began counting the stitches. “But I should have thought that at any rate Mr. Bradfield’s talk would have amused you.”
“Why, so it did, mother.”
Chris had grown very quiet, and was pondering the situation. She began to have a faint suspicion of the direction whither these remarks were tending, and some words which presently fell from her mother’s lips confirmed it.
“I wonder, Chris,” she said softly, running her fingers gently up and down one of the steel knitting-pins, “whether Mr. Bradfield is a bachelor, or a widower, or what?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, mother,” answered the young girl demurely.