‘They were here when I first came,’ he would say. ‘I was a little lonely when I came. I was one of the youngest of an immense family. My people were glad to get rid of us, I think, especially the young ones, who were of no great account. And my mother was dead. Edgeley was very pleasant to me. I was taken up at the rectory as if I had been a son of the house. And nobody can tell what she--what they all--were to me.’ Mr. Cattley coughed a little over the _she_, to make it look as if it were a mistake, changing it into _they_. ‘Mrs. Egerton,’ said Susie, with a directness which brought a little colour to the old curate’s cheek, ‘must have been very pretty then.’ ‘To me she is beautiful now,’ he said, fervently, ‘and always will be. I am not of the opinion that age has anything to do with beauty. It becomes a different kind. It is not a girl’s or a young woman’s beauty any longer, but it is just as beautiful. You will forgive me, Miss Sandford----’ ‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said Susie, but she said it with a little heat. ‘I like people to be faithful,’ she added, perhaps indiscreetly. Mr. Cattley did not answer for some time. And then he said: ‘I am going away now, and another life is beginning. I have been rather a dreamer all my life, but I must be so no longer. I begin to feel the difference. I think, if you will not be offended, that it is partly you who have taught me----’ ‘I!’ cried Susie, with something like fright. ‘I don’t know how that could be----’ ‘Nor I either,’ he said, with a smile which Susie felt to be very ingratiating. ‘You have not intended it, nor thought of it, but still you have done it. There is something that is so real in you, if I may say so--a sweet, practical truth that makes other people think.’ ‘You mean,’ said Susie, with a blush, ‘that I am very matter-of-fact?’ ‘No, I don’t mean that. I suppose what I mean is, that I have been going on in a kind of a dream, and you are so living that I feel the contrast. You must not ask me to explain. I’m not good at explaining. But I know what I mean. I wish you knew Overton, Miss Sandford.’ ‘Yes,’ said Susie, simply, ‘I should like to know it--when do you go?’ He smiled vaguely. ‘That is what I can’t tell,’ he said. ‘I should be there now. When do _you_ go, Miss Sandford?’ ‘I don’t know that either,’ she said, with a blush of which she was greatly ashamed. ‘I suppose I ought to go now: but the country life is pleasant, far more than I could have thought, after living so long in town.’ ‘You have always lived in town?’ ‘As long as I can remember,’ said Susie. ‘That is perhaps what makes one feel that you are living through and through. It must quicken the blood. Now I,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘am a clodhopper born. I love everything that belongs to the country, and nothing of the town--except----’ he said, and laughed and looked at her with pleasant, mild, admiring eyes. ‘You must make an exception,’ said Susie, ‘or you will seem to say that you dislike me.’