"There aren't many fellows as mean as Sam Wheeler," he replied promptly, "and then I was sure that he was going to. I happened to know."
She turned again to her work and he went back to his corner, the brown book under his arm.
The syringa was out now, and the mournful, sweet odour blew in from the bushes around the church. In the still June air he could hear the bees buzzing there. He turned the beloved pages idly. Should it be poor Psyche, so sweet and foolish, or Danaë, the lovely mother, hushing her baby in the sea-tossed chest? He found the place of Proverbial Expressions at the back of the book, and read them with a never-failing interest. Around them he wove long stories to please himself.
"Their faces were not all alike, nor yet unlike, but such as those of sisters ought to be."
This one always pleased him—he could not have said why.
"Here lies Phäton, the driver of his father's chariot, which if he failed to manage, yet he fell in a great undertaking."
The simple grandeur of this one was like the trumpet tone of the organ. He thrilled to it delightedly.
The third he murmured to himself, entranced by the very sound of the words:
"He falls, unhappy, by a wound intended for another; looks up to the skies, and dying remembers sweet Argos."
Ah, why would Thomas never consent to the witchery of these words: