Читать книгу Ombra - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 7

‘If it would be a right thing to visit her, Uncle Courtenay, it would be still righter to ask her to come here.’

‘But that I forbid, my dear,’ said the old man.

Then there was a pause. Kate was greatly tempted to lose her temper, but, on the whole, experience taught her that losing one’s temper seldom does much good, and she restrained herself. She tried a different mode of attack.

‘Uncle Courtenay,’ she said, pathetically, ‘is it because you don’t want any one to love me that nobody is ever allowed to stay here?’

‘When you are older, Kate, you will see what I mean,’ said Mr. Courtenay. ‘I don’t wish you to enter the world with any yoke on your neck. I mean you to be free. You will thank me afterwards, when you see how you have been saved from a tribe of locusts—from a household of dependents——’

Kate stopped and gazed at him with a curious, semi-comprehension. She put her head a little on one side, and looked up to him with her bright eyes. ‘Dependents!’ she said—‘dependents, uncle! Miss Blank tells me I have a great number of dependents, but I am sure they don’t care for me.’

‘They never do,’ said Mr. Courtenay—this was, he thought, the one grand experience which he had won from life.