He dropped behind on their way to the door, to surreptitiously slip something, which looked like money, to the man with the roughly hewn countenance, and as he stood talking, the Reverend Smith Boyd came in, not quite breathlessly, but as if he had hurried.
“I knew you were here,” he said, taking Gail’s slender hand in his own; then his eyes turned cold.
“You recognised my pink ribbon bows,” and she laughed up at him frankly. “You haven’t been over to sing lately.”
“No,” he replied, seemingly blunt, because he could not say he had been too busy.
“Why?” this innocently round-eyed.
Even bluntness could not save him here.
“Will you be at home this evening?” he evaded, still with restraint.
“I’ll have our music selected,” and, in the very midst of her brightness, she was stopped by the sudden sombreness in the rector’s eyes.
“Eight o’clock?”
“That will be quite agreeable.”