"He made the plans, I know, but think of all the people who gave the labor and the things to build it with."
Belding was about to blurt out that it was Clark who gave the things to build it with, but a swift signal imposed silence.
"I know, it's excellent. You have not been at the works lately."
"I was there last week."
"And I was in Philadelphia. I'm sorry."
She said good-by and, with Belding at her side, turned homeward, Clark looked after them curiously, his eyes half closing as though to hide a question that moved in their baffling depths.
The congregation dispersed slowly with the conviction that there had been created one of those memories to which in later years the reflective mind delights to return. Quite naturally, and as they often did, Mrs. Manson and Mrs. Bowers dropped into the Dibbott house with its mistress. Dibbott was already there. He was about to start on one of his official journeys, and just now was rooting things out of a back cupboard with explosive energy.
"Well," said Mrs. Bowers, folding her large, capable hands, "wasn't it lovely?"
The rumble of a street car sounded outside. "It revives old times,"
Mrs. Manson said softly, "but I don't believe we've changed much.
We're too bred in the bone."
"Do we want the old times back?" asked Mrs. Bowers, to whom the past years had been kind.