"'The heart knoweth his own bitterness,'" she quoted, speaking softly; and then—O rarest of women!—she did not enlarge on it. Instead—
Silence while she was gathering the sweet-smelling tangle in her lap into some more portable arrangement. And afterward, when they were drifting slowly homeward in the lengthening shadows, a small asking.
"Mr. Morelock is coming out to-morrow to hold service in St. John's, and I shall go to play for him. Will you go with me, Tom?"
He smiled out of the gold and sapphire depths of a lover's reverie.
"One week from the day after the day after to-morrow—and it will be the longest week-and-two-days of my life, dearest—your grandfather will take you to church, and I shall bring you away. Won't that be enough?"
She took him quite seriously.
"I shall never be a Felicita Young-Dickson, and drag you," she promised. "But, O Tom! I wish—"
"I know," he said gently. "You are thinking of the days to come; when the paths may diverge—yours and mine—ever so little; when there may be children to choose between their mother's faith and their father's indifference. But I am not indifferent. So far from it, I am only anxious now to prove what I was once so bent on disproving."
"You yourself are the strongest proof," she interposed. "You will see it, some day."
"Shall I? I hope so; and that is an honest hope. And really and truly, I think I have come up a bit—out of the wilderness, you know. I am willing to admit that this is the best of all possible worlds; and I want to do my part in making it a little better because I have lived in it. Also, I'd like to believe in something bigger and better than protoplasm."