"Whom do you mean?" asked Julia.

"Your mother's pet, Bart Ridgeley."

"Now, papa, that is hardly kind, after what you said of him the other
day. He is not mother's pet at all. She is only kind to him, as to
everybody. Indeed, he don't seem to me like anybody's pet, to be
patted and kept in-doors when it rains, and eat jellies, and be nice.
I saw him at the store a moment; he was very civil, and merely asked
after mamma, and went out."

"Did you ask him to call and see mamma?" asked her father a little
gravely.

"Not at all. The truth is, papa, after what you said I could not ask
him, and was hardly civil to him."

"Was it unpleasant to be hardly civil to him?"

"No; though I like to be civil to everybody. You know I have seen
little of him since I came home, and when I have, he was sometimes
silent and distant, and not like what he was before I went away."

"You find him improved in appearance and manners?" persisted the
Judge.

"Well, he was always good-looking, and had the way of a gentleman.
Miss Walters seemed quite taken with him, and was surprised that he
had grown up here in the woods."