“Doth his preaching trouble you on Sunday, child? If so, I think more highly of your parson than I should be disposed to think, seeing that I have heard nothing about him save that he is the best judge of a game-cock in Cornwall. But the sermon that makes a listener feel troubled in spirit is wholesome. Ah, never mind that. I tell you that I have been listening to sermons all this lovely morning—the sermon of that eminent preacher, the sun, to the exhortation of the fields, the homily of the bursting flowers, the psalm of the soaring lark, the parable of the butterfly. I was thinking upon the butterfly when you appeared.”
“You are different from Parson Rodney, if it please you, sir.”
“It does please me, my child; but, indeed, I am sure that there are worse parsons than those who take part in the homely sports of their parish, rude though some of these sports may be. I wonder if your ears are open to the speech—the divine music of such a morn as this.”
“I love the morning, sir—the smell of the flowers and the meadows—the lilt of the birds.”
“You have felt that they bring gladness into our life? I knew that your child's heart would respond to their language—they speak to the heart of such as you. And for myself, my thought when I found myself drinking in of all the sweet things in earth and air and sky—drinking of that overflowing chalice which the morning offered to me—my thought—my yearning was for such a voice as that which I heard come from everything about me on this Spring morning. 'Oh, that a man might speak to men in the language of this morn!' I cried.”
There was a long pause. His eyes were looking far away from her. He seemed to forget that he was addressing anyone.
She, however, had not taken her eyes off his face. She saw the light that came into it while he was speaking, and she was silent. It seemed to her to speak just then would have been as unseemly as to interrupt at one's prayers.
But in another moment he was looking at her.
“You surely are one of the sweet and innocent things of this dewy morn,” said he. “And surely you live as do they to the glory of God. Surely you were meant to join in creation's hymn of glory to the Creator!”
She bent her head and then shook it.