Katherine, Chapters XXIX-XXXI [pp. 104-120]

1885.] KATllARrKE. 117
a fire properly, they say; and as Kitty is no fool, she will have
to submit to training."
The result of Mrs. Danforth's inquiries, made for the most
part through the intermediation of her brother-in-law, had proved
highly satisfactory. Mr. Warren himself was in a state of as
nearly unmixed jubilation over it as was possible to a man of
his temperament, taking to himself some unexplained credit as
the remote cause of a condition of affairs which relieved him of
anxieties more pressing than he had heretofore been willing to
admit.
"I was afraid," he said, "that it was going to be a pretty
close shave, not merely to save anything out of the wreck, but
to wind up without a compromise and paying a percentage 6n
the dollar. It would never have done to have trusted the girl's
future entirely to the chance of your living, so long as there was
anything besides it, and my mind was fully made up that neither
the house nor the rent from it should be diverted from her, even
to avoid that disgrace, so long as I could stand between it and
you. But now she and her husband can settle it when she comes
of age, and meanwhile he is not likely to object to the rents accumulating until then. And if you are going to give up this
house and take to boarding until they come back, you can easily
manage in the end to pay dollar for dollar. There couldn't have
been a better way out of the difficulties. As to the man himself,
I took a fancy to him on the spot, and I don't often go astray in
that direction."
On one point only the mother had conducted her investiga.
tions in person.
"You are a friend of Mr. White's," she said to Mr. Giddings
during the course of his second visit to the city; "do you share
his views?"
Louis was beginning to comprehend his prospective motherin- law, and was not, besides, altogether averse to a little diplomacy of the straightforward order.
"White's views are rather hazy," he replied. "I shouldn~t
like to be obliged to define them to myself or to listen too attentively to his exposition of them. I can safely say they are not
mine.'
"But you have some?" the mother urged. " You are not a
professing Christian, I suppose-few young people are until they
have had a good chance to find out for themselves that life is not
all sunshine and plain sailing. But you don't deny the truth of
Christianity?"