d
to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was also
adorably equable--she did not know what it was to be out of humour. And
she was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits.
When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let
her merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts
to see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a week
with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and he
ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to find old
Tauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill.

The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship of her
daughter with this young man than the ordinary American mother would
have done; but Johanna's toleration of it was, for the most part, to be
explained by the literary interests before mentioned. For Johanna was
always in a tremble lest Ephie should become spoiled; and thoughtless
Ephie could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by being
prettily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming to
have private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. This,
and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when every day might be
expected to widen the distance between them, sometimes made Johanna
very gruff and short, even with Ephie herself. As her sister, she alone
knew how much was good and true under the child's light exterior; she
admired in Ephie all that she herself had not--her fair prettiness, her
blithe manner, her easy, graceful words--and, had it been necessary,
she would have gone down on her knees to remove the stones from Ephie's
path.

Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made the impression
of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings,
intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon come
often enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness;
and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her,
had Johanna shown the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he did
not understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the
depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt in
which she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday--poor fools
who were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should have
been taking plain, hard fare at college. To Dove, Johanna had a
particular aversion; chiefly, and in a contradictor