“Death is death, Mr. Clavering,” replied the stone-carver, lifting up the youngest of the children and placing her astride on an apple-branch. “It’s about the worst blow fate’s ever dealt me. But when it comes to any change in my ideas,—no! I can’t say that I’ve altered.”
“I understand you weren’t with him when this terrible thing happened,” said the clergyman. “They tell me he was picked up by strangers. There’ll be no need, I trust, for an inquest, or anything of that kind?”
Luke shook his head. “The doctor was up here last night. The thing’s clear enough. His mind must have given way again. He’s had those curst quarries on his nerves for a long while past. I wish to the devil—I beg your pardon, sir!—I wish I’d taken him to Weymouth with me. I was a fool not to insist on that.”
“Yes, I heard you were away,” remarked Hugh, with a certain caustic significance in his tone. “One or two of our young friends were with you, I believe?”
Luke did not fail to miss the implication, and he hit back vindictively.
“I understand you’ve had an interesting little service this morning, sir, or perhaps it’s yet to come off? I can’t help being a bit amused when I think of it!”
An electric shock of anger thrilled through Clavering’s frame. Controlling himself with a heroic effort, he repelled the malignant taunt.
“I didn’t know you concerned yourself with these observances, Andersen,” he remarked. “But you’re quite right. I’ve just this minute come from receiving Miss Romer into our church. Miss Traffio was with her. Both young ladies were greatly agitated over this unhappy occurrence. In fact it cast quite a gloom over what otherwise is one of the most beautiful incidents of all, in our ancient ritual.”
Luke swung the little girl on the bough backwards and forwards. The other children, retired to a discreet distance, stared at the colloquy with wide-open eyes.
“This baptizing of adults,” continued Luke,—“you call ’em adults, don’t you, on these occasions?—is really a little funny, isn’t it?”