After a while Rosalind spoke: "Uncle Allan, do you know Miss Celia Fair?"
"I used to."
Silence again.
"I like her very much. I think she is sweet, and she bears hard things bravely. Belle says, since her father died they haven't any money, so Miss Celia works, and the boys are troublesome, and her mother is ill a great deal."
Another silence.
"Uncle Allan, was it any harm for me to know her? Belle said there was a quarrel, and Aunt Genevieve said, 'We have nothing to do with the Fairs.'"
As he flicked the ash from his cigar, Allan smiled at Rosalind's unconscious imitation of Genevieve's tone.
"I see no reason why you should take up other people's quarrels," he said gravely.
Then Rosalind told him of her first meeting with Celia, and the incident of the rose. "But I think now I must have been mistaken," she added.
"Perhaps," said Allan, and again he smiled to himself in the twilight, so vividly did the story recall the occasional passionate outbursts of the child Celia, usually so gentle, so timidly reserved.