“My dear Gallilee, this is a very serious thing.”
“My dear Mool, I feel it so—or I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”
“Don’t talk of disturbing me! I see so many complications ahead of us, I hardly know where to begin.”
“Just my case! It’s a comfort to me that you feel it as I do.”
Mr. Mool rose and tried walking up and down his room, as a means of stimulating his ingenuity.
“There’s this poor young lady,” he resumed. “If she gets better—”
“Don’t put it in that way!” Mr. Gallilee interposed. “It sounds as if you doubted her ever getting well—you see it yourself in that light, don’t you? Be a little more positive, Mool, in mercy to me.”
“By all means,” Mr. Mool agreed. “Let us say, when she gets better. But the difficulty meets us, all the same. If Mrs. Gallilee claims her right, what are we to do?”
Mr. Gallilee rose in his turn, and took a walk up and down the room. That well-meant experiment only left him feebler than ever.
“What possessed her brother to make her Carmina’s guardian?” he asked—with the nearest approach to irritability of which he was capable.