"Nobody's very wicked, my dear," answered Billy; "and nobody's any too good. We're all much of a muchness, and good and evil be like the berries on the trees—-all stomachable to somebody. Good's bad and bad's good according to the point of view, and only through being bad, some folks reach to being good. To some nice people being good is as easy as falling off a log—same as it is to you, Auna, because you can't be any other; and to some equally nice sort of people, 'tis a lot more difficult. The point ain't so much whether you be good, as what you be good for. Some folk be so good as gold, and yet good for nought; and some are so wicked as the devil, and yet good for a lot. In fact 'tis a very wonderful world, my dear."
Auna laughed and presently the men rose to go home. Adam promised to send Samuel to see Jacob on the following day. Margery had not been named, but William alluded to her as he departed.
"There's always hope," he said. "I'll come along to-morrow and eat my dinner with you, and us'll have a tell. And don't you get too busy. You'll be a sick man yet, and your maiden here must look after you so well as she can."
Auna promised to do so, and when Avis and Peter had eaten their suppers and gone to bed, she waited on her father.
"I do all the things you do," she told him. "I lock up and put out the lamps and everything, because Avis is too busy with her wedding, and Peter don't remember little things."
She helped him to his own room presently and he found it prepared for him in every particular. Then she aided him to undress, and he bade her return, when she was ready to go to bed, and say good night. She came, in her grey flannel night-gown, and jumped in beside him for a little while.
He was very silent now and very tired. But he liked to listen to her. It seemed as though the years had rolled away and Margery, young again, was lying beside him. The very inflection of Auna's voice was hers.
And while she talked, the girl was thinking of her mother, too, for she knew what was in Jacob's mind.
"Go now," he said, for her presence became too poignant. "Good night, my dinky treasure, and God bless you."
She kissed him.