"Richard, I wish you had gone to church this morning."
"And watched the gossips and scandal-mongers twist their barbs in Mrs. Bennington's heart? Hardly."
She gazed at him, nonplussed. There was surely something uncanny in this boy, who always seemed to know what people were doing, had done or were going to do.
"I wouldn't have believed it of my congregation," she said.
"Oh, Mrs. Bennington is a woman of the world; she understands how to make barbs harmless. But that's why I never go to church. It doesn't soothe me as it ought to; I fall too easily into the habit of pulling my neighbor's mind into pieces. Gossip and weddings and funerals; your reputation in shreds, your best girl married, your best friend dead. I find myself nearer Heaven when I'm alone in the fields. But I've been thinking, Aunty."
"About what?"
"About coming home to stay."
"Oh, Richard, if you only would!" sitting beside him and folding him in her arms. "I'm so lonely. There's only you and I; all the others I've loved are asleep on the hill. Do come home, Richard; you're all I have."
"I'm thinking it over."
Here the Angora came in cautiously. She saw Jove and the dog saw her; fur and hair bristled. Jove looked at his master beseechingly—"Say the word, Dick, say the word, and I'll give you an entertainment." But the word did not come.