At which Mrs. Derrick looked at him with a mingled satisfaction that he had got his answer, and curiosity to know what he thought of it. For the further she felt herself from her child's high stand, the more presuming did she think it in any one to try to bring her down from it.
"If I thought, as I came here, that I walked on a higher level than the generality of mankind, as perhaps in the vanity of my heart I did,—I feel well put down on the ground now," pursued the doctor. "But Mrs Derrick, when may I hope to see this winged thing of yours again?"
It must be confessed that Mrs. Derrick did not admire this speech,—'a winged thing,' as she justly thought, was a somewhat indefinite term, and might mean a flying grasshopper as well as a canary bird. Therefore it was with some quickness that she replied,
"What sort of a winged thing are you talking of, doctor?"
"Nothing worse than a heavenly one, madam. But angel or cherub are such worn-out terms that I avoided them."
He was standing yet where Faith left him, looking down gravely, speaking half lightly, to her mother.
"I don't know who'll see her when she's an angel," said Mrs. Derrick, with a little flush coming over her eyes. "But she wouldn't thank you for calling her one now," she added presently, with her usual placid manner. "Won't you sit down again, doctor?"
"May I ask," said he eying her, somewhat intent upon the answer,—"why she wouldn't thank me for calling her one now?—by which I understand that it would incur her displeasure."
"Why—why should she?" said Mrs. Derrick, who having dropped a stitch was picking it up with intentness equal to the doctor's.
"True!" said the doctor in his usual manner. "Angels don't thank mortals for looking at them. But Mrs. Derrick, when may such a poor mortal as I, stand a chance of seeing this particular one again?"