The maid was slow about appearing, and Olive chatted on, by way of filling up the time.
"I'm glad. It is two weeks or so, since I have seen her. She told me then that she hardly caught a glimpse of you, all day long. Indeed, she was almost as pathetic about it as Professor Opdyke. It really is too bad for the church to keep you quite so busy."
"But, if it is my work?" Brenton interrupted banally, for, in his secret heart, he was painfully aware that it was not the church alone which kept him so preoccupied that his preoccupation had come to be an occupation on its own account.
"Your work needn't be suicidal," Olive objected. "My father, even, says it is taking it out of you rather badly, and he insists that they must hurry about the curate. Seven hours a day is enough for any man, he says; and he declares that you are working twenty. In fact," Olive looked up at him to carry home her admonition; "he says that he has warned you more than once that you must slow down a little, or else stop."
"At least, that would be restful." Brenton spoke more to himself than Olive.
But she turned on him.
"Reed hasn't found it so," she said.
Brenton's face changed, clouded.
"That is an extreme case, Miss Keltridge." Then, with an effort, he changed the subject and became frankly personal. "How is Opdyke getting on?"
She shook her head.