"Just gone on," Edmund echoed. "I wonder if it seems long to them till we come?"
After morning service when the minister turned down the lane, which was a short cut to the Manse, he found Mr. Wycherly waiting for him outside his own gate.
As a rule Mr. Wycherly was rather shy and nervous in the presence of the minister, but there was no sign of this usual mental perturbation as he stopped him with a courteous gesture. "Mr. Gloag," said Mr. Wycherly, and he looked the minister straight in the eyes, "I have done something which you will probably disapprove and condemn. Curly has been here, and I went to the Manse and told Mrs. Gloag that he was here."
"Did he dare to enter my house?" asked the minister, and he glowered at Mr. Wycherly from under his heavy brows.
"I think," that gentleman replied, and he met the minister's keen glance with one that was quite equally combative, "that he would have dared anything to see his mother. As it happened she came to him. And I want to spare her the exertion of telling you that she did so."
"Since when," asked the minister, looking as though he would greatly like to annihilate Mr. Wycherly; "since when has my wife needed a go-between to spare her the necessity of telling me anything?"
"Good heavens, sir!" Mr. Wycherly exclaimed, "can't you see that what I want you to realise is that Mrs. Gloag is very ill—that whatever you may feel on the subject of Curly's coming, it would have been inhuman to prevent her seeing her son—once more, whatever he had done."
Even as Mr. Wycherly spoke the eyes of the two men that a moment before had been bright with mutual antagonism changed. The minister's to a dumb agony, Mr. Wycherly's to an awe-struck pity. He turned and walked hastily away.
Blindly the minister opened the gate and went through the garden into his own house.
His wife met him in the hall, and her face, he thought, was as the face of an angel, full of a soft radiance not of earth.