"Yes," he assented. "That's why I'm so sure of her quality. At her age—to be what she is! Why, Mrs. Caldwell, her mind is like light! And it isn't just a wonderfully acute intelligence either. She has the feeling, the intuition, too. It's as if she thinks with her heart sometimes!" And his face glowed as it never did save for something precious and rare.
"Have you considered her future?" he added.
Mrs. Caldwell smiled: "What do you suppose I'm living for?"
"To make her like you, I hope," answered Peter gallantly. His grandfather had loved Mrs. Caldwell, and his appreciation of her was inherited.
"To make her so much wiser!"
"Wiser?" And Peter looked fondly up at the lovely old face above him. For it was lovely, lovely with living, with the very years that might have withered and spoiled it. To him the wisdom of such living was beyond compare.
But she insisted: "Yes, so much wiser. Peter, in my youth it wasn't ladylike to be too wise. I had a few womanly accomplishments. I sewed. I sang. I read Jane Austen and Miss Edgeworth and Charlotte Brontë. And I gardened a little—with gloves on and a shade hat to protect my complexion. And sometimes I made a dessert. Peter dear, I was a very nice girl, but—!" And she flung up her hands with a gesture that mocked at her futility.
"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.
"Oh, yes, she can—if some one wiser than I teaches her!"
"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville Seminary. '"I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"'"