“As he did me?” said Christie quickly.
“Yes, that’s a way he has.”
“A very kind and Christian way. Why didn’t she stay?”
“Well, it was rather quiet for the lively little thing, and rather too near the city, so we got a good place up in the country where she could go to school and learn housework. The mill had left her no time for these things, and at fifteen she was as ignorant as a child.”
“You must miss her.”
“I do very much.”
“Was she pretty?”
“She looked like a little rose sometimes,” and David smiled to himself as he fed the gray hens.
Christie immediately made a picture of the “lively little thing” with a face “like a rose,” and was uncomfortably conscious that she did not look half as well feeding doves as Kitty must have done.
Just then David handed her the basket, saying in the paternal way that half amused, half piqued her: “It, is getting too chilly for you here: take these in please, and I’ll bring the milk directly.”