"No, I fear you couldn't go in a boat. Trouble is," she murmured, more to herself than to him, "I don't know where you would go."
"Don't Papa know 'bout them?"
"I sometimes think he would like to learn."
"Papa knows all there is to know 'bout guns and powders," defended
Worth loyally.
"Yes, I know; but I don't believe guns and powders have any power to get you to these underlying principles of life."
"Well, what does get you there?" demanded her companion of the practical sex.
She laughed. "I don't know, dear. I honestly don't know. And I'd like to know. Perhaps some time I will meet some one who is very wise, and then I'll ask whether it is experience, or wisdom, or sympathy. Whether some people are born to get there and other people not, or just how it is."
"Watts says you have more sympathy than wisdom, Aunt Kate."
"You mustn't talk about me to Watts," she admonished spiritedly. Then in the distance she heard a mocking voice insinuatingly inquiring: "But why not, if it's all one world?"
"But he said," Worth added, "that it shouldn't be held against you, 'cause of course you never had half a chance. No, it wasn't Watts said that, either. It was the man that mends the boats. It was Watts said you was a yard wide."