"What an absurd fancy, child!" looking up in amazement. "The man was
civil enough to you for so slight an acquaintance."

"It was more than dislike," vehemently. "He watched me all through
breakfast as though he owed me a grudge. I could see it in his eyes."

"You oughtn't to see any eyes but mine, Cathie dear," with anxious
playfulness. "Why should you care for the opinion of any man?"

"Because he is different from any man I ever knew. He belongs to the
world outside. I always did wonder if people would like me out there,"
said Kitty, too doggedly in earnest to see how her words hurt her
listener. "If one could be like those two people yonder! They seem to
know everything--they can do everything!"

"Maria is well enough--for a woman," dryly. "But I never heard McCall
credited with exceptional ability of any sort."

Kitty glanced at him: "Of course you're right," quickly. "Men only can
judge of character: we women are apt to be silly about such things."
Her kind heart felt a wrench at having hurt this good soul. She put
her fingers on his fat hand with a touch that was almost a caress. He
turned red with surprise and pleasure. "But it is pleasant," she said,
glancing down again to the Bourbon rose, "to see such love as that.
They will be married soon, I suppose?"

"Very likely. I never knew of any love in the case before. But Maria
is such a manager! And you think of love, then, sometimes?" timidly
putting his arm about her.

"Oh to be sure! How can you doubt that? But it grows chilly. I must
bring a sacque," hurrying away; and in fact she looked cold, and
shivered.

CHAPTER IX.

"Doctor McCall recognizes the Book-house, just as I did, as the right
background for communion like ours," Miss Muller said complacently to
Kitty a week later. "He meets me here every day."

"Yes," said Catharine with a perplexed look. She had no special
instincts or intuitions, but her eyes were as keen and observant as a
lynx's. He came, she saw, to the Book-house every day. But had he no
other purpose than to meet Maria?

"I did not know that McCall affected scholarship," said Mr. Muller
tartly the next day. "He tells me that he has a peach-farm to manage.
August is no time to loiter away, poring over old books. Just the
peach season."

"No," Kitty replied demurely. But her face wore again the puzzled
look. She began to watch Doctor McCall. He really knew but little, she
saw, of rare books: his reading of them was