"Very different, Kitty. Don't flatter yourself that you will ever be
like him in any way. William Muller is a Christian of the old type.
Though, as for grits, a man should not disregard the requirements of
the stomach too much," with an inward twinge as he smelt the oysters.
He began to play thoughtfully, while Kitty looked again through
the book-shop to the room beyond. The books about her always made
unfamiliar pictures when one looked at them suddenly. They lay now
in such weights of age and mustiness on the floor, the counters, the
beams overhead, the yellow walls of them were lost in such depths of
cobwebs and gloom, that they made a dark retreating frame, in which
she sat like a clear, fine picture in the doorway, the yellow sunset
light behind her. She could see her mother looking in at her, and the
plump, neat little clergyman in his tight-fitting ribbed suit of brown
and spotless shirt-front. He gently stroked his small black imperial
as he talked, but his eyes behind their gold eye-glasses never wavered
in their mild regard of her. Kitty grew restless under it.

"Mr. Muller is talking of the class of books you keep, father," she
said, lowering her voice: "I'm sure of it. They are as unsavory in his
nostrils as to the reformers in the village. They'd all excommunicate
you if they could."

"Guinness, Book Agent, Kitty," finishing his tune with a complacent
scrape, "has been known for twenty years, while Berrytown belongs
to yesterday. But the intolerance of these apostles of toleration is
unaccountable. They mean well, though. I really never knew people
mean better; yet--" He finished the sentence with a shake of the head,
solemnly burying the fiddle in its case.

Both he and Catharine turned involuntarily to the window. Five years