“From your account of Mr. Peck.” said the doctor, “I should think Brother Gerrish might safely object to him as a certain kind of sentimentalist.” “Well, yes, he might, looking at him from the outside. But when you come to talk with Brother Peck, you find yourself sort of frozen out with a most unexpected, hard-headed cold-bloodedness. Brother Peck is plain common-sense itself. He seems to be a man without an illusion, without an emotion.” “Oh, not so bad as that!” laughed the doctor. “Ask Miss Kilburn. She's talked with him, and she hates him.” “No, I don't, Ralph,” Annie began. “Oh, well, then, perhaps he only made you hate yourself,” said Putney. There was something charming in his mockery, like the teasing of a brother with a sister; and Annie did not find the atonement to which he brought her altogether painful. It seemed to her really that she was getting off pretty easily, and she laughed with hearty consent at last. Winthrop asked solemnly, “How did he do that?” “Oh, I can't tell exactly, Winthrop,” she said, touched by the boy's simple interest in this abstruse point. “He made me feel that I had been rather mean and cruel when I thought I had only been practical. I can't explain; but it wasn't a comfortable feeling, my dear.” “I guess that's the trouble with Brother Peck,” said Putney. “He doesn't make you feel comfortable. He doesn't flatter you up worth a cent. There was Annie expecting him to take the most fervent interest in her theatricals, and her Social Union, and coo round, and tell her what a noble woman she was, and beg her to consider her health, and not overwork herself in doing good; but instead of that he simply showed her that she was a moral Cave-Dweller, and that she was living in a Stone Age of social brutalities; and of course she hated him.” “Yes, that was the way, Winthrop,” said Annie; and they all laughed with her. “Now you take them into the parlour, Ralph,” said his wife, rising, “and tell them how he made _you_ hate him.” “I shouldn't like anything better,” replied Putney. He lifted the large ugly kerosene lamp that had been set on the table when it grew dark during tea, and carried it into the parlour with him. His wife remained to speak with her little helper, but she sent Annie with the gentlemen.