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 a mere pretence.  He was neither a lazy nor a morbid man:  what pleasure could he have in neglecting his work day after day, sitting alone in the dusky old shop as if held there by some enchantment?  Kitty knew that she herself had nothing to do with it:  she appeared to be no more in his way than a tame dog would be, and, after the first annoyance which she gave him, was really little more noticed.  But there is a certain sense of home-snugness and comfort in the presence of tame dogs and of women like Kitty:  one cannot be long in the room with either without throwing them a kind word or petting them in some way.  Doctor McCall was just the man to fall into such a habit.  Down on the farm, his cattle, his hands, even the neighbors with whom he argued on politics, could all have testified to his easy, large good-humor.

“Oh, we are the best of friends,” he said indifferently when Maria found Kitty chattering to him once, very much as she did to old Peter.  But when Miss Muller, who had no petty jealousies, enlarged on the singular beauty of her eyes and some good points in her shape, he did not respond.  “I never could talk of a woman as if she were a horse,” he said.  “And this little girl seems to me unusually human.”

“There’s really nothing in her, though.  Poor William!  He is marrying eyes, I tell him.  It’s a pitiable marriage!”

“Yes, it is,” said Doctor McCall gravely.

After that he neglected the old books sometimes to talk to Kitty.  He thought she was such an immature, thoughtless creature that she would not notice that the subject he chose was always the same—­her daily life, with old Peter for her chum and confidant.

“Mr. Guinness, then, has had no companion but you?” he said one day, after a searching inspection of her face.

“No, nobody but me,” quite forgetful, as she and Peter were too apt to be, that her mother was alive.

“And has had none for years?”

“Not since his son died.  Hugh Guinness is dead, you know.”