Auna and her father walked home together afterwards up the long slope from Owley to the moor. He was calm and gracious and they spoke of the girl's coming visit to her great-uncle.
"I wish you'd change your mind even now and come along with me," she said. "You'd do Uncle Lawrence good very like."
"No, I shouldn't do him good, and a town's too great a thought for me yet a while. Not but what I want to do a bit of good, to return a little of all that's been done for me. But opportunity doesn't lack. I'll get in touch with my fellow-creatures slow and gradual, one by one. They frighten me too much all together. They always did; but I'll come back to them, like a ghost, presently."
"You're not a ghost any more. Look how fine you stood among the people to-day, and how pleased they were to see you," said Auna.
"Jeremy's going to drive up and fetch you Monday week. He's a gentleman at large for the minute. Idleness always finds that man at his best."
"But he'll be a chemist next, and he's reading about it already. He says that the goal's in sight, and he feels that, as a dispensing chemist, he will come out like the sun from behind a cloud."
"A very ornamental man, but would have done better as a tree, Auna. There's many a human would have given more pleasure and less trouble as a tree in a wood."
Auna laughed.
"He'd have been a very good-looking tree—one of the silver birches perhaps."
"Margery Elvin is now of the Household of Faith," said Jacob suddenly.