He broke out again after he had begun to drink his coffee.
"Well?" she demanded, from her own lapse into silence.
"Oh, nothing! Only Putney. He wants Brother Peck, as he calls him, to unite
all the religious elements of Hatboro' in a church of his own, and send
out missionaries to the heathen of South Hatboro' to preach a practical
Christianity. He makes South Hatboro' stand for all that's worldly and
depraved."
"Poor Ralph! Is that the way he talks?"
"Oh, not all the time. He talks a great many other ways."
"I wonder you can laugh."
"He's been very severe on Brother Peck for neglecting the discipline of
his child. He says he ought to remember his duty to others, and save the
community from having the child grow up into a capricious, wilful woman.
Putney was very hard upon your sex, Miss Kilburn. He attributed nearly all
the trouble in the world to women's wilfulness and caprice."
He looked across the table at her with his merry eyes, whose sweetness
she felt even in her sudden preoccupation with the notion which she now
launched upon him, leaning forward and pushing some books and magazines
aside, as if she wished to have nothing between her need and his response.
"Dr. Morrell, what should you think of my asking Mr. Peck to give me his
little girl?"
"To give you his--"
"Yes. Let me take Idella--keep her--adopt her! I've nothing to do, as you
know very well, and she'd be an occupation; and it would be far better
for her. What Ralph says is true. She's growing up without any sort of
training; and I think if she keeps on she will be mischievous to herself
and every one else."
"Really?" asked the doctor. "Is it so bad as that?"
"Of course not. And of course I don't want Mr. Peck to renounce all claim
to his child; but to let me have her for the present, or indefinitely, and
get her some decent clothes, and trim her hair properly, and give her some
sort of instruction--"
"May I come in?" drawled Mrs. Wilmington's mellow voice, and Annie turned
and saw Lyra peering round the edge of the half-opened library door. "I've
been discreetly hemming and scraping and hammering on the wood-work so as
not to overhear, and I'd have gone away if I hadn't been afraid of being
overheard."
"Oh, come in, Lyra," said Annie; and she hoped that she had kept the spirit
of resignation with which she spoke out of her voice.