"Then why did you call him a hollyhock?"
"My dear, I take it all back. He isn't a hollyhock and never was."
"If we can hire a house I want it in the suburbs," said Lillie, after a meditation. "I want it outside the city so that Ravvie can have plenty of air. His room must be on the sunny side, papa—hear?"
"Yes," answered papa, who had also had his revery, probably concerning Smithites and Brownites.
"You don't hear at all," said Lillie. "You don't pay any attention."
"Well, my child, there is plenty of time. We sha'n't have a house for the next five minutes."
"I know it. Not for five years perhaps. But I want you to pay attention when I am talking about Ravvie."
Meantime the two were very popular in New Boston. As southern refugees, as martyrs in the cause of loyalty, as an organizer of free black labor, as the widow of a distinguished Union officer, both and each were personages whom the fervent Federalists of the little city delighted to honor. As soon as they would receive calls or accept of new acquaintances they had all that they wanted. Professor Whitewood had been killed at Chancellorsville, although bodily more than three hundred miles from the field of battle; and his son was now worth eighty thousand dollars, besides seven hundred dollars yearly from a tutorship, and the prospect of succeeding to his father's position. This well-to-do, virtuous, amiable, and intelligent young gentleman was more than suspected of being in love with the penniless widow. His sister made the affair a subject of much meditation, and even of prayer, being anxious above all things on earth, that her brother should be happy. Whitewood was more than once observed to drop his Hindustani, sidle out upon the green and beg the privilege of drawing Ravvie's baby-wagon; and what was particularly suspicious about the matter was, that he never attempted to join Rosann in this manner, but only Mrs. Carter. Lillie colored at the significance of the shyly-preferred request, and would not consent to it, but nevertheless was not angry. Her bookish admirer's interest in her increased when he found that she aided her father in his translations; for from his childhood he had been taught to like people very much in proportion to their intellectuality and education. Of evenings he was frequently to be seen in the little parlor of the Ravenels on the fourth floor of the New Boston House. Lillie would have been glad to have him bring his sister, so that they four could make up a game of whist; but since the dawn of history no Whitewoods had ever handled a pack of cards, and the capacity of learning to do so was not in them. Moreover they still retained some of the old New England scruples of conscience on the subject. Whitewood talked quite as much with the Doctor as with Lillie; quite as much about minerals and chemistry as about subjects with which she was familiar; but it was easy to see that, if he had known how, he would have made his conversation altogether feminine. At precisely ten o'clock he rose with a start and sidled to the door; stuck there a few moments to add a postscript concerning science or classic literature; then with another start opened the door, and said, "Good evening" after he was in the passage.
"How awkward he is!" Lillie would sometimes observe.
"Yes—physically," was the Doctor's answer. "But not morally. I don't see that he tramples on any one's feelings, or breaks any one's heart."