"Yes. You never seemed old to me sir."
"And your work for the poor children? I thought, dear, you felt that the Lord called you to that?"
"So I did. But I don't think I feel it so much to-day." Catharine's eyes were wide with this new terror. Was she, then, turning her back on her God?
She was, after all, he thought, nothing but a frightened, beautiful child.
"I should have been too rough for you," he said. How was he to suspect the heights from which she had looked down on his softness and flippancy?
She observed that he said not a word of the preparations he had made, the house furnished, the expectant congregation, or the storm of gossip and scandal which would follow him as a jilted lover. Was the real wound, then, so deep? Or did he overlook such trifles, as men do?
"I did not forget the new dresses and underclothes," thought Kitty, mean and mortified.
He roused himself as Jane came in: "No, Jane, no more tea. Yes, that is my cup on the mantel-shelf."
"Dah's a gen'leman, Miss Kitty. I took him in the Book-shop. 'T mought be Spellissy 'bout de oats. Tink it is Spellissy."
"You had better go, Catharine," taking up his hat.