“So you don’t like him even so much as you expected to?”
“No.” She answered quite abruptly, spreading her large hand flat out upon the table as though, by her sudden pounce, she had caught a fly. “He’s weaker than I had fancied, and vainer.... More insignificant altogether.... Miss Propert, The Close, Polchester....”
“He’s weak, yes,” said Tim, staring down upon his sister. “But he isn’t insignificant. He’s weak because his imagination paints for him so clearly the dreadful state of things it would be if affairs went wrong. He wants then terribly to make them right. But he hasn’t the character to do much himself, and he knows it. A man who knows he’s weak isn’t insignificant.”
Mrs. Trenchard made no reply.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” at last said Tim.
“Oh, he’ll marry Katherine of course.”
“And then?”
“And then they’ll live here.... ‘Dear Canon, I wonder whether ...’—”
“And then?”
“And then—why then it will be just as it is now.”