She smiled, rather wistfully.
“I knew the very suggestion of a child would win you,” she said.
He looked at her kindly.
“It is your feminine perspicacity that wins me,” he said. “I cannot tell you how it touches me to find us all three in such accord over this business of humanitarianism, and so superior, in its pursuit, to ignoble jealousies and misunderstandings.”
That was a tribute to the secretary, who had never shewn the least resentment over the lady’s inclusion in the inner confidences of his Chief. Nestle stood quiet a moment or two, as Gilead, having spoken, left the room; and then, moving softly, addressed a word to the amanuensis. She waved him away; and he saw at once, to his curious concern, that she was crying.
Gilead, foreseeing a long day and a queer experience, drove to Paddington Station, whence he took a train presently to a distant up-river junction, from which a short branch line carried him leisurely to Shipton-on-Thames. It was a quiet torrid day in late April, hot as the ideal Midsummer, and, after asking his direction, he started on foot across the fields for the Old Rectory, which, it appeared, was situated at no great distance away on the banks of the river. His path was a pleasant one, remote and peaceful, leading him by sweet-smelling pastures and lanes to a waterside hamlet, where a scrap of church-tower, ruined and ivy-grown, and a fragment of antique graveyard at its foot spoke of some ancient benefice long since discontinued or translated. He was looking about in this sleepy retreat for someone to correct his way for him, when a sound of youthful voices breaking out if a leafy road reached his ears, and he saw two children, a boy and a girl, turn a corner and make in his direction. He advanced to meet them.
“Can you tell me the way to the Old Rectory?” he asked.
The boy went on without answering, but, finding that his little companion had stopped embarrassed, swaggered round and came back.
“Beg your pardon?” he said.
Gilead repeated his question.