“And even that, Catty,” said Mary, smiling, “might fail to satisfy him. It is something very different indeed he might have imagined his daughter. I'm sure nobody can be more ignorant than I am, of what a person in my station ought to know. I cannot hide this from myself in my sad moments. I do not try to do so, but I have always relied upon the consolation that, to an existence such as mine is like to be, these deficiencies do not bring the same sense of shame, the same painful consciousness of inferiority, as if I were to mingle with the world of my equals. But if he were to come back,--he, who has seen society in every shape and fashion,--and find me the poor, unlettered, unread, untaught thing I am, unable to follow his very descriptions of far-away lands without confusion and mistake; unable to benefit by his reflections from very want of previous knowledge,--oh, Catty dearest, what a miserable thing is self-love after all, when it should thus thrust itself into the foreground, where very different affections alone should have the place.” “He 'd love you like his own heart,” said Catty. “Nobody knows him like me; and if there was ever one made for him to dote on, it's your own self.” “Do you indeed think so?” cried Mary, eagerly. “Do I know it--could I swear it?” said Catty. “He was never much given to study himself, except it was books of travel like 'Robinson Crusoe,' and the like; and then, after reading one of them books he 'd be off for days together, and we 'd be looking for him over the whole country, and maybe find him in the middle of Kyle's Wood up a tree; or once, indeed, it was in the island of Lettermullen we got him. He built a mud-house, and was living there with a goat and two rabbits that he reared himself, and if he was n't miserable when they brought him away home! I remember his words well,--'Maybe,' says he, 'the time will come that I 'll go where you can't come after me;' and ye see that's what he's done, for nobody knows where he wasn't wandering these last eight or nine years.” When Catty got upon this theme she could not be brought to quit it,--nor, indeed, did Mary try,--for though she had heard these stories of her father's boyish days over and over again, she never wearied of them; they had all the fascination of romance for her, with the stronger interest that grew out of her love for one who, she was told, had so loved herself. Besides this, she felt in her own heart the same promptings to a life of action and adventure. All the incidents and accidents of an eventful existence were the very things to delight her, and one of her happiest daydreams was to fancy herself her father's companion in his wanderings by flood and field.