Some trees had strange personalities, she said. You could never guess the other side of their heads, until you knew them very well. But all had good in them, and it was wisest never even to see the bad.
"I always find if you are afraid of things they become real and hurt you, but if you are sure they are kind and true they turn gentle and love you. I am hardly ever afraid of anything now—only I do not like a thunderstorm. It seems as if God were really angry then, and were not considering sufficiently just whom He meant to hit."
Justice to her appeared to hold chief place among the virtues.
"Do you stay here all the year round?" asked Cheiron, presently, "or do you sometimes have a trip to the seaside?"
"I have never been away since I first came—I would love to see the sea," and her eyes became dreary. "I can just remember long ago with my mother, we went once—she and I alone—" then she turned to her old companion and looked up in his face.
"Had you a mother? Of course you had, but I mean one that you knew?"
The late Mrs. Carlyon had not meant anything much to her son in her lifetime, and was now a far-off memory of forty years ago, so Cheiron answered truthfully upon the subject, and Halcyone looked grave.
"When we have been friends for a long time I will tell you of my beautiful mother—and I could let you share my memory of her perhaps—but not to-day," she said.
And then she was silent for a while as they walked on. But when they were turning back towards the orchard house she suddenly began to laugh, glancing at the old gentleman with eyes full of merriment.
"It is funny," she said, "I don't even know your name! I would like to call you Cheiron—but you have a real name, of course."