"Oh! you're the gentleman she wanted to see. She's been asking ever so often whether you wasn't come yet. She's quite impatient to see you, poor lamb!"
While he spoke, Kitely had drawn nearer to the curate, regarding him with projecting and slightly flushed face, and eyes that had even something of eagerness in them.
"I would have come earlier, only I thought it would be better not," said Mr. Fuller.
Mr. Kitely drew yet a step nearer, with the same expression on his face.
"You won't put any nonsense into her head, will you, sir?" he said, almost pleadingly.
"Not if I know it," answered Mr. Fuller, with a smile of kind humor. "I would rather take some out of it."
"For you see," Kitely went on, "that child never committed a sin in her life. It's all nonsense; and I won't have her talked to as if she was a little hell-cat."
"But you see we must go partly by what she thinks herself; and I suspect she won't say she never did anything wrong. I don't think I ever knew a child that would. But, after all, suppose you are right, and she never did anything, wrong—"
"I don't exactly say that, you know," interposed Mr. Kitely, in a tone of mingled candor and defense. "I only said she hadn't committed any sins."