"Stale buns are most unwholesome."
"That is what materialists like you always say of any diet which does not suit them. Personally I like stale buns."
"You mean that you can put up with them when you have a solid lunch in prospect."
He had taken her hand to help her to the level and now suddenly he paused, and stooping kissed it passionately. "Oh, Belle, my darling, why should we talk or think of the future? To-day is holiday-time and I am happy."
So, hand in hand, like a couple of children, they went homewards across the down; while the great gilt letters of the legend above the hospital glowed and shone like a message of fire against the blue sky.
Was that the end of the story, so far as Belle and Philip were concerned? Or on some other sunshiny day in a future June or December did those two pass through the churchyard where the tiny flower-set graves grew more numerous year by year, and, beneath the tower whose chime had so often called Belle to her bairns, take each other for better, for worse? Most likely they did, but it is a trivial detail which has nothing to do with the record of Miss Stuart's Legacy. That began with her father, and ended with her child. She paid it cheerfully to the uttermost farthing, and was none the worse for it. Such payments, indeed, leave us no poorer unless we choose to have it so. The only intolerable tax being that which follows on the attempt to inherit opinions; for, when we have paid it, we have nothing in exchange save something that is neither real estate nor personal property.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: A lineal descendant of the Prophet.
[Footnote 2]: The three divisions recognised in Mahometan polemics.
(1) The place of Islam; (2) the place of the enemy; (3) the place of protection. The sign of the latter is the liberty of giving the call to prayers.
[Footnote 3]: A common occurrence in old Pathan houses.