'Now they'll take me back,' said Ernest; 'you might have come.'
But it was not the aunts. It was the old pew-opener, come to scrub the chancel. She came slowly in with pail and brush; the pail slopped a little water on to the floor close to Ernest as she passed him, not seeing.
Then the marble child moved, turned toward Ernest with speaking lips and eyes that saw.
'You can stay with me forever if you like,' it said, 'but you'll have to see things happen. I have seen things happen.'
'What sort of things?' Ernest asked.
'Terrible things.'
'What things shall I have to see?'
'Her,'—the marble child moved a free arm to point to the old woman on the chancel steps,—'and your aunt who will be here presently, looking for you. Do you hear the thunder? Presently the lightning will strike the church. It won't hurt us, but it will fall on them.'
Ernest remembered in a flash how kind Aunt Emmeline had been when he was ill, how Aunt Jessie had given him his chessmen, and Aunt Harriet had taught him how to make paper rosettes for picture-frames.
'I must go and tell them,' he said.