Mrs.Hudson uttered a short, faint sigh, and Miss Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate and visited him with a short, cold glance.
"I 'm afraid, Mrs.Hudson," Rowland pursued, evading the discussion of Roderick's possible greatness, "that you don't at all thank me for stirring up your son's ambition on a line which leads him so far from home.

I suspect I have made you my enemy." Mrs.Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked painfully perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being impolite.

"My cousin is no one's enemy," Miss Garland hereupon declared, gently, but with that same fine deliberateness with which she had made Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.
"Does she leave that to you ?" Rowland ventured to ask, with a smile.
"We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments," said Mr.Striker; "Miss Garland perhaps most of all.

Miss Garland," and Mr.Striker waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been regrettably omitted, "is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter of a minister, the sister of a minister." Rowland bowed deferentially, and the young girl went on with her sewing, with nothing, apparently, either of embarrassment or elation at the promulgation of these facts.
Mr.Striker continued: "Mrs.Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated to converse with you freely.

She will allow me to address you a few questions.