Jeff glanced quickly at Miss Millet. This seemed to bear somewhat on their recent discussions. Miss Millet as quickly returned the glance.
“I know what you are thinking, Jeff,” she said, with an intelligent look.
“Well, auntie,” returned the youth, “it does seem hard to think that any good can come out of all this—doesn’t it?”
“Young man,” said the captain, regarding Jeff with an almost stern look, “if a savage were taken into a factory and shown the whirling wheels and bands and rollers working in all directions, and saw filthy old rags boiled and mixed up with grass and evil-smelling substances, and torn to shreds and reduced to pulp in the midst of dirt and clattering noise and apparent confusion; and if that savage were to say, ‘Surely nothin’ good can come out of all this!’ wouldn’t you—knowin’ that great rolls of fair and spotless paper were to come out of it—pronounce that savage a fool, or, at least, a presumptuous fellow?”
“True, captain; I accept the rebuke,” said Jeff, with a short laugh and a swift glance at Rose, who, however, was gazing demurely at her tea-cup, as if lost in the contemplation of its pattern. Possibly she was thinking of the absurdity of taking tea at all at such an hour!
“Well, then, Jeff,” continued the captain, “don’t you go and judge unfinished work. Perfect men and women are, in this world, only in process of manufacture. When you see them finished, you’ll be better able to judge of the process.”
Jeff did not quite agree with his friend; for, gazing at Rose, he could not help feeling that at least one woman had, to his mind, been almost perfectly finished even here! However, he said nothing.
At this point the conversation was turned by Miss Millet suddenly recalling to mind her brother’s generous friend in China.
“You have no idea, Dick, how much good I have been able to do with that money. Of course it could not pay for the swimming-bath, or the church, or but here, I have a note of it all.”
She pulled a soiled red note-book from her pocket and was about to refer to it, when she was arrested by the grave, sad expression that had overspread her brother’s countenance.