After that evening Phil began to drop in every two or three nights, and he did not hesitate to tell me that the increasing frequency of his visits was due to his progressive interest in Susan.
"She's a curious child," he explained; which was true in any sense you chose to take it, and all the way back to the Latin curiosus, "careful, diligent, thoughtful; from cura, care," and so on. . . .
"I've never seen much of children," Phil continued; "never had many chances, as it happens. My sister has three boys, but she's married to a narrow-gauge missionary, and lives—to call it that—in Ping Lung, or some such place. I've the right address somewhere, I think—in a notebook. Bertha sends me snapshots of the boys from time to time, but I can't say I've ever felt lonely because of their exile. Funny. Perhaps it's because I never liked Bertha much. Bertha has a sloppy mind—you know, with chance scraps of things floating round in it. Nothing coheres. But you take this youngster of yours, now—I call her yours——"
"Do!" I interjected.
"Well, there's the opposite extreme! Susan links everything up, everything she gets hold of—facts, fancies, guesses, feelings; the whole psychic menagerie. Chains them all together somehow, and seems to think they'll get on comfortably in the same tent. Of course they won't—can't—and that's the danger for her! But she's stimulating, Hunt"—Phil always called me Hunt, as if just failing whole-heartedly to accept me—"she's positively stimulating! A mind like that must be trained; thoroughly, I mean. We must do our best for her."
The "we" amused me and—yes, I confess it—nettled me a little.
"Don't worry about that," I said, and more dryly than I had meant to; "I'm combing the country now for a suitable governess."
"Governess!" Phil snorted. "You don't want a governess for Susan. You want, for this job," he insisted, "a male intellect—a vigorous, disciplined male intellect. Music, dancing, water colors—pshaw! Deportment—how to enter a drawing-room! Fiddle-faddle! How to enter the Kingdom of God! That's more Susan's style," cried Phil, with a most unaccustomed heat.
I laughed at him.
"Are you willing to take her on, Phil?" I asked. "I believe it's been done; Epicurus had a female pupil or two."