“Oh, uncle! I’m so sorry!” said Kate. “I’m sure I did not mean to vex you.”
“Not at all, not at all, my dear.—It wasn’t you.”
“Do you know,” Kate went on, anxious to prevent anything unpleasant, for there was something very black perched on Janet’s forehead, “I have taken to reading about that kind of thing.”
“I beg you will give it up at once. You will bewilder your brains till you are ready to believe anything, if only it be absurd enough. Nay, you may come to find the element of vulgarity essential to belief. I should be sorry to the heart to believe concerning a horse or dog what they tell you nowadays about Shakespeare and Burns. What have you been reading, my girl?”
“Don’t be alarmed, uncle. Only some Highland legends, which are too absurd either for my belief or for your theories.”
“I don’t know that, Kate.”
“Why, what could you do with such shapeless creatures as haunt their fords and pools for instance? They are as featureless as the faces of the mountains.”
“And so much the more terrible.”
“But that does not make it easier to believe in them,” said Harry.
“I only said,” returned his uncle, “that their shapelessness adds to their horror.”
“But you allowed—almost, at least, uncle,” said Kate, “that you could find a place in your theories even for those shapeless creatures.”