"Suppose we talk about Joan," said the Bishop. "She looks well—very well—quite like a little milkmaid."
"That's just the trouble," said Tom, plunging eagerly into the subject, as one near to his heart. "Why, uncle, she's a perfect tomboy. Do you know, Joan is seventeen years old, and there's not a romance in the house she hasn't read, and not a tree in the country round that she can't and don't climb. You heard her change the subject when father asked where the cherries came from that we had at dinner."
"No," answered the Bishop. "You see, I am not sufficiently a member of the family to take in all these shibboleths."
"They came from a tree she was ashamed to say she had climbed. Those cherries—I recognized them—are almost never gathered, because there's not a boy around here who likes to climb that tree. Do you think she ought to run wild like that? I don't mean she doesn't do finely at home, for she does—just as well as she can—that is—" Tom's truth forced the amendment. "Father's awfully good to her. He keeps a chair by his study desk for her, that she calls her thinking-chair, and when she's in any home trouble she slips in there and sits by him to think it over. Sometimes she consults father, but as often she doesn't say a word. She seems to get help from him without that. I suppose you have seen how very fond they are of each other."
The Bishop was winding his watch, and looking about the bedroom to which Tom had led him. "That's nice," he said. "Where's your thinking-chair?"
The question came so suddenly, and the look which went with it was so kindly searching, that Tom stammered out the truth with a rush: "Father and I are not confidential like that. But it's a mercy that Joan is his favorite. You see, she's so dreamy she's apt to blunder, and if she were not a favorite with him it would be frightfully hard for her."
"Is it frightfully hard for you?" asked the Bishop.
"Sometimes," said Tom, truthfully. He spoke candidly, but with a reserve which his uncle respected.
"Wouldn't you miss Joan sadly if she were to be sent away?" he asked. "You seem to depend on each other."
The older man noted the swift change in the young face near him.