“Very well, papa.”
I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments she was already looking much better.
After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and his wife, were faring. The wind had already increased in violence. It threatened to blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I passed through it to reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I called out.
Agnes’s voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to the bedrooms above—
“Mother’s gone to church, sir.”
“Gone to church!” I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during a storm.
“O yes, Agnes, I remember!” I said; “your mother thinks the weather bad enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now? Where is your husband?”
“He’ll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don’t mind the wet. You see, we don’t like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors call ‘great guns.’”
“And what becomes of his mother then?”
“There don’t be any sea out there, sir. Leastways,” she added with a quiet smile, and stopped.