“And I can call you cousin,” she said sedately. “Indeed, I am going to treat you as a cousin. I want you, if not to do, to think of doing something for me. I don’t know,” nervously, “whether I am asking more than I ought—if so you must forgive me. But it is not for myself.”
“You frighten me!” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s about Mr. Colet, the curate whom you helped us to save from those men at Brown Heath. He has been shamefully treated. What they did to him might be forgiven—they knew no better. But I hear that because he preaches what is not to everybody’s taste, but what thousands and thousands are saying, he is to lose his curacy. And that is his livelihood. It seems most wicked to me, because I am told that no one else will employ him. And what is he to do? He has no friends——”
“He has one eloquent friend.”
“Don’t laugh at me!” she cried.
“I am not laughing,” he answered. He was, in fact, wondering how he should deal with this—this fad of hers. A little, too, he was wondering what it meant. It could not be that she was in love with Colet. Absurd! He recalled the look of the man. “I am not laughing,” he repeated more slowly. “But what do you want me to do?”
“To use your influence for him,” Mary explained, “either with the rector to keep him or with some one else to employ him.”
“I see.”
“He only did what he thought was his duty. And—and because he did it, is he to pay with all he has in the world?”
“It seems a hard case.”