“I suppose not; but it’s rather awful to think of what it will mean to her to lose him. And she’s so sympathetic and tender-hearted.” Hal stood a moment looking gravely at the fire—“you know, I think she’s the most splendid person I’ve ever known.”
“Splendid!...” a trifle testily. “Why? Splendid seems an odd word to use.”
“It’s the one that suits Ethel Hayward best of all. Anything else would be too commonplace. When I think what her life is—the endless struggle to make both ends meet—work morning, noon, and night—and on the top of it all the brother she adores a helpless, suffering invalid, it quite overawes me. If she were bitter and complaining it would be different, but she is nearly always cheerful and hopeful and ready to think of some one else’s troubles. And yet she isn’t goody-goody—nor what one describes as ‘worthy’; she’s just human through and through.”
“She sometimes seems to me a little severe,” he said.
“Severe!... Oh, Dudley, she is the kindest soul alive.”
“Perhaps she was tired; but it seemed to me, considering Doris’s youth, she expected rather a lot of her.”
“Ah!...”
Hal turned away, and picked up an evening paper. The exclamation might have meant anything, yet Dudley half knew it meant that in some way Hal believed Doris had wilfully misrepresented her sister, and, naturally resenting the inference, he returned to his book and said no more.
Hal lingered a little longer, passed one or two remarks on the evening news, told him of her day in the country, and then went to bed.
Yet, in spite of her soreness towards Doris, something in her evening with Ethel had unaccountably cheered and refreshed her—the kindly praise, the warm-hearted affection, the sight of the strong, womanly face, unembittered by its heavy sorrow.