“Johnny’s mother looks like a cod, poor thing!” continued Helen. “I don’t wonder. I should think she would. I’m sure I should in her place.”
“You are incorrigible!” said Bayard, laughing in spite of himself. “And yet—you’ve done a better morning’s work than anybody in Windover has done here for a month!”
“I’m going to take tea with Johnny’s mother next week,” observed Helen—“at the Widows’ Home, you know. But I’ve promised to take Joey to the circus first.”
“You are perfectly refreshing!” sighed Bayard delightedly.
“Mr. Bayard,” said Helen, with a change of manner as marked yet as subtle as the motion of the wave that fell to make way for the next, against the bobbing bows of the empty dory, “I had a long talk with Job Slip.”
“You say you found him sober?”
“As sober as a Cesarea trustee. But the way that man feels to you is something you haven’t an idea of. I thought of that verse, you know, about love ‘passing the love of women.’ It is infatuation. It is worship. It is enough to choke you. Why, I cried when I heard him talk! And I don’t cry, you know, very often. And I’m not ashamed to own it, either. It made me feel ashamed to be alive—in such a world—why, Mr. Bayard!” Helen unclasped her hands from the back of her head, and thrust them out towards him, as if they were an argument.
“Why, I thought this earth was a pleasant place! I thought life was a delightful thing!... If the rest of it is like this town—Windover is a world of woe, and you are one of the sons of God to these unhappy people!”
She said this solemnly, more solemnly than he had ever heard her say anything before. He laid down his oars, and took off his hat. He could not answer, and he did not try.