toward her now; and the lady accepted the protecting care of the serving-man with a dull sense of gratitude. She even smiled on him faintly, in a languid way, but in a way that seemed to him to lessen the distance between them. Jim's education had been going on rapidly during the last ten days. He seemed to himself to be quite another man than the one who sat on the fence with Missouri Joe, less than two weeks agone.
Perhaps Miss Edwards noticed the change, and innocently encouraged him to aspire. We must not blame her if she did. This is what woman's education makes of her. The most cultured women must be grateful and flattering toward the rudest men, if circumstances throw them together. Born to depend on somebody, they must depend on their inferiors when their superiors are not at hand; must, in fact, assume an inferiority to those inferiors. If they sometimes turn their heads with the dangerous deference, what wonder!
Secure in the distance between them, Miss Edwards assumed that she could safely defer to Sandy-haired Jim, if, as it seemed, he enjoyed the sense of being her protector. Even had he been her equal, she would have said to herself, "He knows my heart is breaking for another, and will respect my grief." In this double security, she paid no heed to the devotion of her companion, only thinking him the kindest and most awkward of good and simple-minded men. That is just what any of us would have thought about Sandy-haired Jim, gentle readers.
John Edwards received his sister with a grave kindliness, which aggravated her grief. He would not ask her a question, nor give her the smallest opportunity of appealing to his sympathies. She had undertaken this business without his sanction, and without his sympathy she must abide the consequences. Toward her, personally, he should ever feel and act brotherly; but toward her foolish weakness for Erskine, he felt no charity. He was surprised and pleased
