"Oh, it's of no use to talk to you about Ellen, brother! You can take up things fast enough when you find them out, but you never will see with other people's eyes."
"What do your eyes see, Catherine?"
"She is altogether too childish for her years; she is really a baby."
"I don't know," said Mr. Lindsay, smiling: "you should ask M. Muller about that. He was holding forth to me for a quarter of an hour the other day, and could not stint in her praises. She will go on, he says, just as fast as he pleases to take her."
"Oh, yes, in intelligence and so on, I know she is not wanting; that is not what I mean."
"She is perfectly lady-like always," said Mrs. Lindsay.
"Yes, I know that, and perfectly child-like too."
"I like that," said Mr. Lindsay: "I have no fancy for your grown-up little girls."
"Well," said Lady Keith, in despair, "you may like it; but I tell you she is too much of a child, nevertheless, in other ways. She hasn't an idea of a thousand things. It was only the other day she was setting out to go, at mid-day, through the streets, with a basket on her arm some of that fruit for M. Muller, I believe."
"If she has any fault," said Mr. Lindsay, "it is want of pride but I don't know I can't say I wish she had more of it."