“Many folks out to church, Maun?” she asked.
Bard, as though he resented her speaking to his son, made a gesture toward the table.
“Here, Annie,” he said authoritatively, “Go cut up a loaf o’ bread and set out a bowl of preserves. Me and William Henry is goin’ to have a bite to eat.”
Up in his own room, Mauney later tried to read a small book Miss Byrne had given him. It was a leather-bound copy of Thomas à Kempis. He wondered why she had chosen such a gift, for the subject matter was too cloistral. Tossing it aside, he picked up an Ancient History she had recently loaned him and became absorbed in it until he was able to forget some of the things that rankled in his breast, among others, Jean Byrne’s peculiar manner in the buggy. Lying with his head propped on a pillow he read until his eyes ached. In fancy he lived in ancient palaces among courtiers and councillors, saw the regalia of royal fêtes, through which came the sound of war trumpets. He read of ambitious sculptors whose names were written on the roster of deathless fame and saw steel engravings of their work—headless, armless torsos, nicked and cracked by the ravage of centuries. He saw conquerors leading stalwart armies, deciding the fate of nations. The story held him to the last page and he saw that the aspirations of a mighty nation were dead; the rising star of ambition was quenched in its ascent; and only a vast pile of melancholy tokens remained to interest scholars who delved with spades. And he went to sleep in great wonderment as to what it all signified.
A few days later he took the Ancient History to return it to Miss Byrne. As he approached Fitch’s gate on foot, he heard Jean’s low laughter, and on passing between the lilac hedges, saw her on the front verandah with Mrs. Fitch.
“Good evening,” he said, “you both seem to be enjoying yourselves.”
“Come and sit down, Mauney. Mrs. Fitch has just been convulsing me with a story from real life,” she invited, her eyes red from laughter. “What have you been doing to-day?”
“Oh, the same old stuff,” he replied, nodding slyly towards Mrs. Fitch, busy with long, white knitting-needles. “I thought I’d stroll over and hear the latest scandal.”
Mrs. Fitch was a woman of fifty, with scrupulously tidy grey hair, a square jaw, silver spectacles and thin lips suggesting latent deviltry.
“Wal, Maun,” she said, without looking up from her rapidly-interplying ivory-points, “we ain’t accurate scandal-mongers. Not the kind that talk about folks for the sake of harmin’ them. But things do strike us peculiar like, at times, and gives our livers a healthy shakin’ up. I’ve just been telling Miss Byrne about the young Hawkins brat.” She paused and cast a sharp glance over the tops of her glasses. “You know him?” she asked.