Peter spoke as if he felt a personal pride in Shirley's achievements, an attitude which Shirley's sister was quick to note.
"I felt out of patience with you when she began, for I thought her zeal for making a working-girl of herself might be of your inspiring," said Olive, with a quick look at him.
"Not a bit of it. I never heard of it till she had been a week at her first studies. How should I have dared suggest such a course?"
"You and she seem to be great friends."
"Do we? It is an honour I appreciate very much," answered Peter, with a little touch of courtliness in his manner such as had often surprised her in the early days of their acquaintance, and which struck her now as decidedly interesting in a young man who spent his days in a factory, even if he was many degrees higher in position in that factory than when she had first known him. What his position was at present she did not guess, nor did she know that Murray had begun to look at him as a man to be desired in his own business, a man whose brain was undoubtedly to make him an important factor wherever he might be.
What she did recognise was that she had met few men anywhere who had the power to command her interest as Peter had always done, and seemed now more capable of doing than ever before. As for his looks--she owned to herself that she had never before realised quite how fine and resolute and altogether manly was his whole personality.
"Speaking of contentment," said Peter, breaking the little silence which had followed upon his last words, "don't you think it follows rather naturally upon feeling that you are accomplishing something worth the doing? It does n't make so much difference what it is; the point is, that you 're doing it. If it costs effort, so much the better."
"It depends on what you think is worth the doing," said Olive. "You and I would be apt to differ on that--as Shirley and I do."
"Not much question of that," admitted Peter, smiling. He gave her one of his clear-sighted glances, under which she shrank a little though she did not show it. It made her say, rather defiantly:
"Of course you think, as you always did, that I 'm the most useless creature living, and that my ideals are about as insignificant as the amount of actual work I do."