"I did not use to be so thick-headed," rousing herself, and staring sleepily at the rain-washed window and the crackling fire. She sang a little hymn to herself, that simplest of all old ditties:
I think, when I hear that sweet story of old.
It made her tender and tearful, and brought her feet close to her Saviour, as those other children upon whose head He laid his hands. "I ought to be thankful that I have work for Him," she thought. "How I envied Mary McKean when she sailed to India as a missionary! And here are the heathen ready-made for me," proceeding very earnestly to think over the state of the wretched three hundred. But her head began to nod again, and the fire was suddenly dashed out in blackness. She started up yawning. It was all so dreary! Life—Then and there our wholesome Kitty would have made her first step toward becoming the yearning, misplaced Woman of the Time, but for a knock which came at the door.
There had been an occasional roll of thunder, and the rain beat steadily upon the roof. The first knock failed to rouse her. At the second a man burst in, and stopped as suddenly in the dark end of the shop, shading his eyes from the glare: then he came tiptoeing forward. Even in this abrupt breaking in out of the storm there was something apologetic and deprecating about the man. As he came up, still sheltering his eyes, as though from the surprise of Kitty's loveliness, and not the fire, he had the bearing of a modest actor called before the curtain for bouquets.
"I had not expected—this" with a stage wave of the hand toward Catharine.
Now Kitty's pink ears, as we know, were always pricked for a compliment, and her politeness was apt to carry her over the verge of lying; but she was hardly civil now: she drew coldly back, wishing with all her heart that her lover, fat, simple, pure-minded little Muller, were here to protect her. Yet Mrs. Guinness, no doubt, would have said this man was made of finer clay than the clergyman. Both figure and face were small and delicate: his dress was finical and dainty, from the fur-topped overshoes to the antique seal and the trimming of his gray moustache. He drew off his gloves, holding a white, wrinkled hand to the fire, but Catharine felt the colorless eyes passing over her again and again.
"Your business," she said, "is probably with my father?"
"Your father is Peter Guinness? No. My business hardly deserves the name, in fact," leisurely stopping to smooth and fold the yellow gloves between his palms, in order to prolong his sentences. "It was merely to leave a message for his son, for Hugh Guinness."
"Hugh Guinness is dead."
"Dead!" For an instant the patting of the gloves ceased, and he looked at her steadily; then, with a nod of comprehension, he went on: "Oh, it is not convenient for Hugh to be alive just now? We are old comrades, you see: I know his ways. I know he was in Delaware a year ago. But I have no time now to go to Delaware. The message will no doubt reach him if left with you." He had made the gloves into a square package by this time, and, flattening it with a neat pat or two, put it in his pocket, turning to her with a significant smile.