The steadiness and repetition of Timothy's worldly career and semi-daily walk to and from his business therefore seemed to Father Wiliston phenomenal, a problem not to be solved by algebra, for if a equalled Timothy, b his house, c his business, a + b + c was still not a far-reaching formula, and there seemed no advantage in squaring it. Geometrically it was evident that by walking back and forth over the same straight line you never so much as obtained an angle. Now, by arithmetic, “Four times thirty, multiplied by—leaving out Sundays—Bless me! How singular! Thirty-seven thousand five hundred and sixty times!”
He wondered if it had ever occurred to Timothy to walk it backward, or, perhaps, to hop, partly on one foot, and then, of course, partly on the other. Sixty years ago there was a method of progress known as “hop-skip-and-jump,” which had variety and interest. Drawn in the train of this memory came other memories floating down the afternoon's slant sunbeams, rising from every meadow and clump of woods; from the elder swamp where the brown rabbits used to run zigzag, possibly still ran in the same interesting way; from the great sand bank beyond the Indian graves. The old Wiliston house, with roof that sloped like a well-sweep, lay yonder, a mile or two. He seemed to remember some one said it was empty, but he could not associate it with emptiness. The bough apples there, if he remembered rightly, were an efficacious balm for regret.
He sighed and took up his book. It was another cure for regret, a Scott novel, “The Pirate.” It had points of superiority over Cruden's Concordance. The surf began to beat on the Shetland Islands, and trouble was imminent between Cleveland and Mor-daunt Mertoun.
Timothy and his wife drove away visiting that afternoon, not to return till late at night, and Bettina, the Scandinavian, laid Father Wiliston's supper by the open window, where he could look out across the porch and see the chickens clucking in the road.
“You mus' eat, fater,” she commanded.
“Yes, yes, Bettina. Thank you, my dear. Quite right.”
He came with his book and sat down at the table, but Bettina was experienced and not satisfied.
“You mus' eat firs'.”
He sighed and laid down “The Pirate.” Bettina captured and carried it to the other end of the room, lit the lamp though it was still light, and departed after the mail. It was a rare opportunity for her to linger in the company of one of her Scandinavian admirers. “Fater” would not know the difference between seven and nine or ten.
He leaned in the window and watched her safely out of sight, then went across the room, recaptured “The Pirate,” and chuckled in the tickling pleasure of a forbidden thing, “asked the blessing,” drank his tea shrewdly, knowing it would deteriorate, and settled to his book. The brown soft dusk settled, shade by shade; moths fluttered around the lamp; sleepy birds twittered in the maples. But the beat of the surf on the Shetland Islands was closer than these. Cleveland and Mordaunt Mertoun were busy, and Norna—“really, Norna was a remarkable woman”—and an hour slipped past.