Kitty meanwhile sat by the window mending the clothes that had come out of the wash.  Mr. Muller was reading some letters relative to the school to her.  This was the day of the week on which she always mended the clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so.  But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her.  The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller’s droning voice, were maddening to her:  every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her.  Where should she go?  What should she do?  Had the world nothing in it for her but this?  Yesterday she had made up her mind to go to Delaware to find Hugh Guinness, alive or dead, and bring him to his father.  That would be work worth doing.  This morning she remembered that Delaware was a wide hunting-ground—­that she had never been ten miles from home in her life.  If there were anybody to give her advice!  This Doctor McCall had seemed to her to-day as, in fact, he did to most people, practical, honest, full of information.  He would too, she somehow felt, understand her wild fancy.  But—­

“Why should Doctor McCall dislike me?” she broke in at the close of one of Mr. Muller’s expositions.

“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.