Miss Muller was down in St. George's lecturing last fall, and made her mark, as she always does. But the Guinness men were now hopelessly conservative. She made her home with Kitty.
"A fine woman," old Peter said the morning after she was gone.
"Never knew a woman with a finer mind," said Hugh. "Nor many men."
"She nurses that dog as if it were a baby," said Kitty sharply. "It's silly! It's disgusting!"
Peter twanged his bow on the porch, looking down over the great farm-slopes stretching away in the morning light.
"We have everything to make life good to us, Hugh," he said after Kitty had gone. "And the best thing, to my notion, is an old-fashioned woman in the house, with no notion of ruling, like that Muller girl and her set."
Hugh was romping with his boy: "Do you know your first business in this world, sir? To take care of your mother," glancing at the garden, where Kitty, in her pretty white dress, was clipping chrysanthemums.
She rules him and the house and their lives absolutely, with but little regard for justice. But he has never suspected it. She hardly knows herself that she does it.
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.