“I ask no questions,” said Miss Mildmay, “I hope I have a head on my shoulders and a couple of eyes in it. I don’t require information from Katherine! What I’ve got to say is that she mustn’t do it. Most girls think very little of refusing a man; sometimes they continue good friends, sometimes they don’t. When a man sulks it shows he was much in earnest, and is really a compliment. But to stay at home morning and night because there is a man in the town who is furious with you for not marrying him; why, that’s a thing that is not to be allowed to go on, not for a day----” “Nobody has any right to say that there is any man whom----” “Oh, don’t redden up, Katherine, and flash your eyes at me! I have known you since you were _that_ high, and I don’t care a brass button what you say. Do you think I don’t know all about you, my dear? Do you think that there’s a thing in Sliplin which I don’t know or Jane Shanks doesn’t know? Bless us, what is the good of us, two old cats, as I know you call us----” “Miss Mildmay!” cried Katherine; but as it was perfectly true, she stopped there and had not another word to say. “Yes, that’s my name, and _her_ name is Mrs. Shanks; but that makes no difference. We are the two old cats. I have no doubt it was to Stella we owed the title, and I don’t bear her any malice nor you either. Neither does Jane Shanks. We like you, on the contrary, my dear; but if you think you can throw dust in our eyes---- Why, there is the Rector’s voice through the partition asking for me.” “Oh,” said Katherine, “I must go, really I must go; this is the time when papa likes me to go to him. I have stayed too long, I really, really must go now----” “Sit down, sit down, dear. It is only her fun. There is nobody speaking through the partition. The idea! Sliplin houses are not very well built, but I hope they are better than that.” “I must have been mistaken,” said Miss Mildmay grimly. “I believe after all it is only Jane Shanks’ boy; he has a very gruff manly voice, though he is such a little thing, and a man’s voice is such a rarity in these parts that he deceives me. Well, Katherine, the two old cats hear everything. If it does not come to me it comes to _her_. My eyes are the sharpest, I think, but she hears the best. You can’t take us in. We know pretty well all that has happened to you, though you have been so very quiet about it. There was that young city man whom you wouldn’t have, and I applaud you for it. But he’ll make a match with somebody of much more consequence than you. And then there is poor Mr. Stanley. The Stanleys are as thankful to you as they can be, and well they may. Why, it would have turned the whole place upside down. A young very rich wife at the Rectory and the poor girls turned out of doors. It just shows how little religion does for some people.” “Oh, stop! stop!” cried Mrs. Shanks. “What has his religion to do with it? It’s not against any man’s religion to fall in love with a nice girl.”