He did not answer for a minute.
'I am thankful to have known her. My star of light. She has been to me——'
That sentence he never finished.
The following day ended the week that Professor Bruce had taken to consider whether he should accept the appointment offered to him or not. Master Caleb could not rest without going to Morechester to learn his determination, and in obedience to a message from Mistress Dorothy that she would like to see me again, he took me with him.
On the way to Morechester we talked ourselves into a hope that the Professor would have decided not to go away. The cool bright touches of morning air, full of the song of birds and of the smell of dewy flowers and freshly cut hay, made us feel hopeful. We remembered how Professor Bruce had said that he should write no more books, because he was growing an old man, and this new work would be harder still than book-writing. Master Caleb felt sure that Dorothy was afraid of it for her father.
'Depend upon it,' he said, 'we shall find that he has listened to his daughter, and will rest content with having had this great honour offered to him.'
After that I was astonished at the silence that came over him as we walked up the High Street of Morechester. The freshness of early morning still rested on the town, the shadows from the east reached right across the street, and few passengers were stirring except people coming in from the country, carrying fragrant baskets of vegetables and fruit.
'We shall soon know now,' I said. 'See, there is Mistress Dorothy.'
She was coming out into the sunshine through the great door of the Minster, among a little knot of people that scattered in different directions. We came up with her as she stood on her own doorstep.
'Willie,' Master Caleb whispered hurriedly, as we crossed the market-place, 'do not say a word about our being sorry. We must not trouble her. It would grieve her good heart to think it gave us pain.'