Phillis's face fell, and she drew away her hand sharply.
"Oh!" she cried. "But I am afraid that will not do any more."
"Why, Phillis—I may call you Phillis since I am your guardian, may I not?—did he treat you badly? Why did you not write to me?"
"I did not write, Mr. Colquhoun—if you call me Phillis, I ought to call you Lawrence, ought I not, because you are not old?—I did not write, because dear old Mr. Dyson treated me very kindly, and because you were away and never came to see me, and because I—I never learned to write."
By this time Phillis had learned to feel a little shame at not being able to write.
"Besides," she went on, "he was a dear old man, and I loved him. But you see, Lawrence, he had his views—Jagenal calls them crotchets—and he never let me go outside the house. Now I am free I do not like to think of being a prisoner again. If you try to lock me up, I am afraid I shall break the bars and run away."
"You shall not be a prisoner, Phillis. That is quite certain. We shall find something better than that for you. But it cannot be very lively, in this big house, all by yourself."
"Not very lively; but I am quite happy here."
"Most young ladies read novels to pass away the time."
"I know, poor things." Phillis looked with unutterable sympathy. "Mr. Dyson used to say that the sympathies which could not be quickened by history were so dull that fiction was thrown away upon them."