Lyndall seemed absorbed in her play; but he ventured another remark.
“Do you think now, Miss Lyndall, that he’ll ever have anything in the world—that German. I mean—money enough to support a wife on, and all that sort of thing? I don’t. He’s what I call soft.”
She was spreading her skirt out softly with her left hand for the dog to lie down on it.
“I think I should be rather astonished if he ever became a respectable member of society,” she said. “I don’t expect to see him the possessor of bank-shares, the chairman of a divisional council, and the father of a large family; wearing a black hat, and going to church twice on a Sunday. He would rather astonish me if he came to such an end.”
“Yes; I don’t expect anything of him either,” said Gregory, zealously.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Lyndall; “there are some small things I rather look to him for. If he were to invent wings, or carve a statue that one might look at for half an hour without wanting to look at something else, I should not be surprised. He may do some little thing of that kind perhaps, when he has done fermenting and the sediment has all gone to the bottom.”
Gregory felt that what she said was not wholly intended as blame.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said sulkily; “to me he looks like a fool. To walk about always in that dead-and-alive sort of way, muttering to himself like an old Kaffer witchdoctor! He works hard enough, but it’s always as though he didn’t know what he was doing. You don’t know how he looks to a person who sees him for the first time.”
Lyndall was softly touching the little sore foot as she read, and Doss, to show he liked it, licked her hand.
“But, Miss Lyndall,” persisted Gregory, “what do you really think of him?”