"Is he conceited? Oh! what a pity!"
"Conceited?" Doctor McKirdy prided himself on his sense of strict justice and probity: "Nay, nay, that's no' the word for it. Mr. Oliver Boringdon just considers that he is always right, and that such a good thinker as himself can never be wrong. He's encouraged in his ideas by the silly women about here."
"Does my godmother like him?—he's her land-agent, isn't he?"
"Madam!" cried Doctor McKirdy indignantly, "Madam has never wasted a thought upon him,—why should she?"
He looked quite angrily at his companion. Barbara was still smiling: a delicate colour, the effect of walking against the wind, had come into her face.
"They're all alike," growled the doctor to himself, "just mention a young man to a young woman and smiling begins," but the harsh judgment, like most harsh judgments, was singularly at fault. Poor Barbara was waking up to life again, ready to take pleasure in the slightest matter which touched her sense of humour. The doctor, however, had become seriously uneasy. Why this strange interest in the Boringdons? Mrs. Rebell now belonged to the Priory, and so was surely bound to adopt without question all his, Alexander McKirdy's, views and prejudices. Her next words fortunately gave him the opening he sought.
"I suppose there are many young ladies at Chancton?"
"There is just one," he said, brightening, "a fine upstanding lass. The father of her is General Thomas Kemp. May-be you've heard of him, for he's quite a hero, Victoria Cross and a' that, though the fools about here don't recognise him as such."
"No," said Barbara, "I never heard of the heroic General Kemp."
Her eyes were brimming over with soft laughter. Living with her parents first in one and then in another continental town, she had had as a young girl many long solitary hours at her disposal, and she had then read, with keen zest, numberless old-fashioned novels of English life. This talk seemed to bring back to her mind many a favourite story, out of which she had tried in the long ago to reconstruct the England she had then so longed to know. Ah! now she must begin novel-reading again! And so she said, "I suppose that Oliver Boringdon is in love with the General's daughter."