"
"Ah, well; you ask him and you will see."
"I would rather not ask him, if there is any danger of his saying
what you think."
Morris looked at her with an air of mock melancholy.
"It wouldn't give you any pleasure to contradict him?"
"I never contradict him," said Catherine.
"Will you hear me abused without opening your lips in my defence?"
"My father won't abuse you. He doesn't know you enough."
Morris Townsend gave a loud laugh, and Catherine began to blush
again.
"I shall never mention you," she said, to take refuge from her
confusion.
"That is very well; but it is not quite what I should have liked you
to say. I should have liked you to say: 'If my father doesn't think
well of you, what does it matter?'"
"Ah, but it would matter; I couldn't say that!" the girl exclaimed.
He looked at her for a moment, smiling a little; and the Doctor, if
he had been watching him just then, would have seen a gleam of fine
impatience in the sociable softness of his eye. But there was no
impatience in his rejoinder--none, at least, save what was expressed
in a little appealing sigh. "Ah, well, then, I must not give up the
hope of bringing him round!"
He expressed it more frankly to Mrs. Penniman later in the evening.
But before that he sang two or three songs at Catherine's timid
request; not that he flattered himself that this would help to bring
her father round.
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