XVI.
A GROUP OF NEW INFLUENCES
All Rosemonters were required to sit together at Sunday morning service, in a solid mass of cadet gray. After this there was ordinary freedom. Thus, when good weather and roads and Mrs. March's strength permitted, John had the joy of seeing his father and mother come into church; for Rosemont was always ahead of time, and the Marches behind. Then followed the delight of going home with them in their antique and precarious buggy, and of a day-break ride back to Rosemont with his father—sweetest of all accessible company. Accessible, for his mother had forbidden him to visit Fannie Halliday, her father being a traitor. He could only pass by her gate—she was keeping house now—and sometimes have the ecstasy of lingeringly greeting her there.
"Oh, my deah, she's his teacheh, you know. But now, suppose that next Sunday——"
"Please call it the sabbath, Powhatan."
"Yes, deah, the sabbath. If it should chance to rain——"
"Oh, Judge March, do you believe rain comes by chance?"
"Oh, no, Daphne, dear. But—if it should be raining hard——"
"It will still be the Lord's day. Your son can read and meditate."
"But if it should be fair, and something else should keep us fum church, and he couldn't come up here, and should feel his loneliness——"