“I wonder would you mind if I gave you a little advice, Miss Meg, in return for all you have given me,” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and looking at it as if he were trying to find out the lettering on its nickel plate.

“Certainly not.”

She laid down the bundle and looked at him with calm, surprised eyes.  “Say whatever you please, I do not mind in the very least.”

He sat up and played with the handle of a strap while he spoke.

“You have brothers,” he said; “some day they will go a little astray—­for it is only women like you, Miss Meg, and angels who can keep to the path always.  Don’t be too hard on them.  Don’t make an effort to show them the difference between your whiteness and their blackness.  They will see it right enough, but they won’t like you to draw their attention to it.  Try and look gentle and forgiving—­they’ll feel quite as miserable as you could wish them to feel.  The world has a beautiful frown of its own, and an endless vocabulary of cold words—­wouldn’t it do if the little sisters left it the monopoly of them?”

“Oh-h-h!” said Meg.  Her cheeks were crimson, and all the dignity had oozed out of her voice.

He buckled the strap round nothing with infinite care, and went on again in a low tone: 

“Suppose Pip did something very wrong some day, and the world flung stones at him till he was bruised all over.  And suppose feeling very wretched, he came home to his sisters.  And Meg, because wickedness was abhorrent to her, threw a few more little stones, so that the pain might teach him a lesson he could not forget.  And Judy, because he was her brother and in trouble, flung her arms round him and encouraged him, and helped him to fight the world again, and gave him never a hard word or look, thinking he had had plenty.  Which sister’s influence would be greater, Miss Meg?”

Meg’s little soft mouth, was quivering, her eyes were on the ground, because the tears would have splashed out if she had lifted them.

“Oh-h-h!” she said again.  “Oh, how very horrid I have been—­oh-h-h!”

She covered her face with her hands, for one of her quickly gathered tears was trembling on her lashes.

Mr. Gillet dropped the strap and the pipe, and looked across to her with tender eyes.

“I am more than twice your age, Miss Meg, old enough nearly to be your father—­you will forgive me for saying all this, won’t you?  I was thinking, of my sister who died.  I had another little sister, too, a year older, but she was hard—­only event to her once.  She is one of the best women in England now, but her lips are severe.  Little Miss Meg, could not bear the thought of you growing hard.”

Half a dozen big tears had fallen down among the forks.  Meg was crying because it was borne upon her what a very hateful creature she was.  First Alan lectured her and spoke of his sister, and now this man.