"Even you," said Barbara, as though I were a sort of Schopenhauer, a professional disparager of her sex—"even you have a high opinion of Mrs. Considine."
I had. Every one had a high opinion of Mrs. Considine. She was not very beautiful or very clever or very fascinating or very angelic or very anything—but she was one of those women of whom everybody has a high opinion. The impoverished widow of an Indian soldierman, with a son soldiering somewhere in India, she managed to do a great deal on very small means. She was a woman of the world, a woman of character. She knew how to deal with people of queer races. Heaven indicated her for appointment by Barbara as Liosha's duenna in the Boarding House. Mrs. Considine, herself compelled to live in these homes for the homeless, gladly accepted the proposal, came down, interviewed her charge, who happened then to be in a mood of meekness indescribable, and went away, so to speak, with her contract in her pocket. It was part of the programme that Mrs. Considine should tactfully carry on Liosha's education, which had been arrested at the age of twelve, instil into her a sense of Western decorum, extend her acquaintance, and gradually root out of her heart the yearning to do her enemies to death. It was a capital programme; and I gave it the benediction of a smile, in which, seeing Barbara's shrewd blue eyes fixed on me, I suppressed the irony.
When this was all settled Jaffery proclaimed himself the most care-free fellow alive. His hitherto grumpy and resentful attitude towards Liosha changed. He established himself as fellow slave with her under the whip of Susan's tyranny. It did one good to see these two magnificent creatures sporting together for the child's, and incidentally their own, amusement. For the first time during their intercourse they met on the same plane.
"She's really quite a good sort," said Jaffery.
But if it was pleasant to see him with Liosha, it was still more touching to watch his protective attitude towards Doria. He seemed so anxious to do her service, so deferential to her views, so puzzle-headedly eager to reconcile them with his own. She took upon herself to read him little lectures.
"Don't you think you're rather wasting your life?" she asked him one day.
"Do you think I am?"
"Yes."
"Oh! But I work hard at my job, you know," he said apologetically—"when there's one for me to do. And when there isn't I kind of prepare myself for the next. For instance I've got to keep myself always fit."
"But that's all physical and outside." She smiled, in her little superior way. "It's the inside, the personal, the essential self that matters. Life, properly understood, is a process of self-development. If a human being is the same at the end of a year as he was at the beginning he has made no spiritual progress."