"Oh, we are the best of friends," he said indifferently when Maria found Kitty chattering to him once, very much as she did to old Peter. But when Miss Muller, who had no petty jealousies, enlarged on the singular beauty of her eyes and some good points in her shape, he did not respond. "I never could talk of a woman as if she were a horse," he said. "And this little girl seems to me unusually human."
"There's really nothing in her, though. Poor William! He is marrying eyes, I tell him. It's a pitiable marriage!"
"Yes, it is," said Doctor McCall gravely.
After that he neglected the old books sometimes to talk to Kitty. He thought she was such an immature, thoughtless creature that she would not notice that the subject he chose was always the same—her daily life, with old Peter for her chum and confidant.
"Mr. Guinness, then, has had no companion but you?" he said one day, after a searching inspection of her face.
"No, nobody but me," quite forgetful, as she and Peter were too apt to be, that her mother was alive.
"And has had none for years?"
"Not since his son died. Hugh Guinness is dead, you know."
Doctor McCall was looking thoughtfully at the floor. He rose presently and took up his hat: "The old man cannot have been unhappy with such love as you could give him. No man could."
Kitty was sitting, as usual, on a low stool pasting labels on some dog-eared books: as long as McCall stood looking at her round cheeks and double chin she pasted on, apparently unconscious that he was there, but when he turned away she watched him shrewdly as he went uneasily up and down the shop, and finally, with a curt good-bye, turned out of the door. As the stout figure passed through the low branches of the walnuts her gray eyes began to shine. Her Mystery was nearly solved.