After a while, however, they fell into a system, arranging their comings and goings with a mutual and jealous care in order that they might not meet. And they both gave Susie a great deal of information about themselves. She sat, and smiled, and listened, not without a subdued pleasure in that power which she had discovered later than usual, and which even this mutual antagonism made more flattering. Percy was full of schemes in which he demanded her interest. ‘Everything has gone on here in the old-fashioned way,’ he said, ‘in the famous old let-alone way. Aunt Mary has pottered about: she is the only one that has done anything. My father never had any energy. He would have let anyone take the reins out of his hands. And she has done it; and she has always had old Cattley under her thumb. He has not dared to say his soul was his own. To see him sit and stare and worship her used to be our fun when we were boys. Jack must have told you.’ ‘No, never. John saw nothing that was not perfect. He worshipped all of you, I think.’ ‘Some of us too much, perhaps--not me, I am certain,’ said Percy. ‘But old Cattley was the greatest joke, Miss Sandford. How you would have laughed!’ (Susie, however, did not laugh at all at this suggestion, but sat as grave as a judge, with her eyes bent on her sewing.) ‘But nothing could have been more unecclesiastical,’ Percy continued, recovering his gravity. ‘It was the first thing I had to do in getting the parish into my hands. Aunt Mary had to be put down.’ ‘Has she been put down?’ said Susie, laughing a little in her turn. ‘I flatter myself, completely,’ said the young man. ‘She has learned to keep her own place, which is everything. My father gives no trouble; he sees how things have been neglected, and he is quite willing that I should have it all in my own hands. I hope, especially if I have your help, Miss Sandford, to have the cottage hospital and all the improvements of which we have talked carried out. If I might hope that you would set it going----’ ‘But would not that be like your aunt’s interference over again, with no right at all,’ Susie said. ‘No one can have any right--save what is given them by the clergy. And you are not my aunt--very different! How I should love to delegate as much as is fit of my authority to you!’ He paused a moment, with a sigh and tender look, at which Susie secretly laughed, but outwardly took no notice. Then he added: ‘Aunt Mary would have no delegation. She interferes as if she thought she had a right to do it--a pretension not tenable for a moment. But to entrust the woman’s part--to find an Ancilla Domini, dear Miss Sandford, in you!’ Mr. Cattley was not so lively as this. He would sit for a long time by the little work-table which had belonged to old Mrs. Sandford, and say very little. He would sometimes relate to Susie something about her grandparents, and talk of the pretty old lady with her white hands.