Miss Carmagee’s solidity of will made her contention impregnable. Moreover, the common-sense view she took of the matter boasted a large element of discretion. People who live in a small house on one hundred and sixty pounds a year cannot be expected to be prepared for social emergencies. Even a philosopher is limited by the contents of his larder, and Miss Carmagee was one of those excellent women whose philosophy takes note of the trivial things of life—pots, pans, and linen, the cold end of mutton, a rice-pudding to supply three. It is truly regrettable that a man’s Promethean spirit should be bound down by such contemptible trifles. Yet a tactful refusal to share a suet-pudding may be worth more than the wittiest epigram ever made.
Miss Carmagee and Catherine spent an hour alone together that evening, for Murchison had patients waiting for him at Dr. Tugler’s surgery in Wilton High Street. Master Jack had returned from his tea-party, to be hugged, presented with a box of soldiers, a clasp-knife, and a prayer-book, and then hurried off to bed. The soldiers and the knife shared the sheets with him; the prayer-book (amiable aunts forgive!) was left derelict under an arm-chair.
But the great event that night for these two women, such contrasts and yet so alike in the deeper things of the soul, came with that communing together before the fire, the lights turned low, the room in shadow. It was somewhile before Miss Carmagee approached the purpose that had brought her across England with bag and baggage. She was a woman of tact, and it is not easy to be a partisan at times without wounding those whom we wish to help.
The elder woman had hardly broached the subject, before Catherine, sitting on a cushion beside Miss Carmagee’s chair, turned from the fire-light with an eager lifting of the head.
“Why, it was only yesterday that James spoke to me of such a plan.”
“To return to us?”
“Yes, and win back what he lost.”
Miss Carmagee saw her way more clearly.
“You know, child, you have many friends.”
“I?”