Peter was always convinced, yielding a ready assent to all her arguments:  then he would turn his mild, cow-like regards on her:  “But, my dear, I smoke the best Partagas:  they’re very expensive, I assure you.”

Long ago his wife had left him to go his own way downward.  As with smoking, so with other ungodly traits and habits.  She felt his condemnation was sure.  It was a case for submission at the female prayer-meeting; bemoaning his eternal damnation became indeed a part of her religion, but the matter was not one to render her apple-cheeks a whit less round or her smile less placid.  The mode in which Peter earned their bread and butter interfered more with her daily comfort and digestion.  Dealing in second-hand books, half of which were dramatic works, was a business not only irreligious, but ungenteel.  She never passed under the swinging sign over the door without feeling that her cross was indeed heavy, and the old parlor, which had been turned into a shop, she left to the occupancy of her husband and Kitty.

Out of the shop, one summer afternoon, had come for an hour the perpetual scrape, scrape of Peter’s fiddle.  He jumped up at last, suddenly, bow in hand, and went to the doorstep, where his stepdaughter sat sewing.  From the words he had overheard in the next room he was sure that the decisive hour of life had just struck for the girl, and there she was stitching her flannel and singing about “Alpine horns, tra-la!” She ought to have known, he thought, without hearing.  A woman ought to be of the kindred of the old seeresses, and by the divine ichor or the animal instinct in her know when the supreme moment of love approached.

But what kind of love was this coming to Kitty?

He twanged the strings just over her head, to keep her from hearing, but quite out of tune, he was so agitated with the criticalness of the moment.  But then most moments were critical to Peter Guinness, and agitation, his wife was wont smilingly to assure him, was his normal condition.

He anxiously watched Catharine’s restless glances into the room where her mother and the clergyman sat in council.  She had guessed their object then?  She was opposed to it?

A thoughtful frown contracted her forehead.  Suddenly it cleared:  “Oysters?  Yes, it is oysters Jane is broiling.  I’m horribly hungry.  I could go round the back way and bring us a little lunch in here, father.  They’ll never see us behind the books.”

“Shame on you, Kit!  You’re nothing but a greedy child.”  But he laughed with a sudden sense of relief.  She really was nothing yet but a healthy child with a very sharp remembrance of meal-times.  It would be years before her mother or Mr. Muller would talk to her of the marriage or the work they had planned for her.

“Just as you please,” taking up her flannel again.  “Very likely it will be midnight before we have supper:  Mr. Muller often forgets to eat altogether.  From what mother tells me, I suppose approving conscience and a plate of grits now and then carry him through the day.  It’s different with me.”