"I must go," she murmured in real distress.
But he just looked up and put out his hand. And she sat down again and let her hand rest in his. And half her joy was pure misery. For she did not understand the ways of this strange, boyish man and she did not know what the end of such a friendship could be.
When those first angry drops pattered down on the leaves Nanny started up in alarm and would have raced for home. But he caught her quickly, slipped her cloak on, and before she had time to protest, they were running hand in hand down the hillside. Just as the full fury of the storm struck the house they banged the front door shut and stood panting and laughing in the hall.
It was very pleasant to sit by his fire and let the storm and the ruddy flames do the talking. But even as she sat and dreamed Nanny knew it would never do. Green Valley knew and loved her but that would not save her. So Nanny walked to the telephone and called up the one soul it was always safe to tell things to. And twenty minutes later Grandma Wentworth arrived.
It was while they sat talking in cozy comfort before the snapping fire that Cynthia's son suggested the attic.
"Mother told me once never to rummage through her old trunks unless Mary Wentworth was by to explain. So come along."
Grandma looked a little startled at that.
"We'll go," she said. "It's the finest kind of a day to go messing in an attic. But I'll step into the kitchen first and borrow two all-over aprons. My dress isn't new but Nan's is."
The old Churchill homestead was built in the days when folks believed reverently in attics. Not little cubby-holes under the roof but in generous, well-lighted, nicely-floored affairs that less reverent generations have turned into smoking dens, studios and ballrooms.
A properly kept attic in the olden days was no dark, musty-smelling, cobwebby affair. It was as neat in its way as the parlor and a hundred times more interesting. The parlor was a stiff room with stiff furniture and stiff family portraits. The attic was a big, natural room filled with mellow light, a vague hush and memories—memories of lost days, lost dreams, lost youth with its joys and hopes and sorrows.