“I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to be cynical— I didn't, really. I only spoke from what I've seen.”
“Seen?” said Gregory. “If I were to go by what I saw daily, hourly, in London in the course of my work I should commit suicide within a week.”
“But what else can one go by?”
Without answering, Gregory walked to the edge of the orchard, and stood gazing over the Scotch garden, with his face a little tilted towards the sky. Mrs. Pendyce felt he was grieving that she failed to see whatever it was he saw up there, and she was sorry. He came back, and said:
“We won't discuss it any more.”
Very dubiously she heard those words, but as she could not express the anxiety and doubt torturing her soul, she told him tea was ready. But Gregory would not come in just yet out of the sun.
In the drawing-room Beatrix was already giving tea to young Tharp and the Reverend Husell Barter. And the sound of these well-known voices restored to Mrs. Pendyce something of her tranquillity. The Rector came towards her at once with a teacup in his hand.
“My wife has got a headache,” he said. “She wanted to come over with me, but I made her lie down. Nothing like lying down for a headache. We expect it in June, you know. Let me get you your tea.”
Mrs. Pendyce, already aware even to the day of what he expected in June, sat down, and looked at Mr. Barter with a slight feeling of surprise. He was really a very good fellow; it was nice of him to make his wife lie down! She thought his broad, red-brown face, with its protecting, not unhumorous, lower lip, looked very friendly. Roy, the Skye terrier at her feet, was smelling at the reverend gentleman's legs with a slow movement of his tail.
“The old dog likes me,” said the Rector; “they know a dog-lover when they see one wonderful creatures, dogs! I'm sometimes tempted to think they may have souls!”