V
After that evening Phil began to drop in every two or three nights, and
he did not hesitate to tell me that the increasing frequency of his
visits was due to his progressive interest in Susan.
"She's a curious child," he explained; which was true in any sense you
chose to take it, and all the way back to the Latin _curiosus_,
"careful, diligent, thoughtful; from _cura_, care," and so on....
"I've never seen much of children," Phil continued; "never had many
chances, as it happens. My sister has three boys, but she's married to a
narrow-gauge missionary, and lives--to call it that--in Ping Lung, or
some such place. I've the right address somewhere, I think--in a
notebook. Bertha sends me snapshots of the boys from time to time, but I
can't say I've ever felt lonely because of their exile. Funny. Perhaps
it's because I never liked Bertha much. Bertha has a sloppy mind--you
know, with chance scraps of things floating round in it. Nothing
coheres. But you take this youngster of yours, now--I call her
yours----"
"Do!" I interjected.
"Well, there's the opposite extreme! Susan links everything up,
everything she gets hold of--facts, fancies, guesses, feelings; the
whole psychic menagerie. Chains them all together somehow, and seems to
think they'll get on comfortably in the same tent. Of course they
won't--can't--and that's the danger for her! But she's stimulating,
Hunt"--Phil always called me Hunt, as if just failing whole-heartedly to
accept me--"she's positively stimulating! A mind like that must be
trained; thoroughly, I mean. We must do our best for her."
The "we" amused me and--yes, I confess it--nettled me a little.
"Don't worry about that," I said, and more dryly than I had meant to;
"I'm combing the country now for a suitable governess."
"Governess!" Phil snorted. "You don't want a governess for Susan. You
want, for this job," he insisted, "a male intellect--a vigorous,
disciplined male intellect. Music, dancing, water colors--pshaw!
Deportment--how to enter a drawing-room! Fiddle-faddle! How to enter the
Kingdom of God! That's more Susan's style," cried Phil, with a most
unaccustomed heat.