"I think he tries; but Gertrude has a will of her own. She frets if he refuse to humour her, and as she is very delicate, and the doctors look very gravely at her sometimes, he is afraid not to give her her way. He sometimes talks to Langley, and she always takes Gertrude's part; why I don't know, for no one else likes her."
"How nice to know people, and to get interested in their lives," sighed the poor recluse. "You have made me quite long to know all the people in your neighbourhood, especially Mr. Logan and his sister."
"Dear Miss Cosie, how she will pet you; and you will be great friends with Mr. Logan. Do you know," in a puzzled voice, "I don't seem to get on with Mr. Logan as well as I did; he gave me lectures last holidays, and I became a little shy of him."
"And yet you are not one to mind any amount of scolding."
"Of course not, when I don't care about the people who give the scolding; but that is just it. Mr. Logan looks at one so benevolently, and yet his eyes seem to read you through and through; and then he goes on in that mild voice of his, till Miss Catherine, as he calls her, either makes a fool of herself or runs out of the room."
"But he has no right to lecture you," indignantly.
"Ah, has he not!" sighed Cathy, and the dark, brilliant eyes looked very serious for a moment. "He says we girls at the present day have such a low standard of right that we never rise above medium goodness, and are too easily satisfied with ourselves. He is always saying we have no great saints now-a-days, and that there can be no St. Augustines without Monicas."
"It is very true."
"Oh, he is such a good man, he makes one feel ashamed of one's self. When he talks one forgets his patched coat and plain face and bald head. I used to laugh when he pushed his spectacles up in that droll way, but somehow nothing seems odd about him now."
"And he is not married?"