“How good it is of you to say that,” he cried, heartily. “Then you will, won’t you? How awfully good of you.” And, with another energetic shake of those skinny fingers, he walked from the room.
Miss Mopius opened her eyes wide, very wide. Presently, however, she nodded her curls.
“Of course,” she murmured, “he has gone to speak with Roderigue.”
A soft flush spread over her pale cheeks, and she waited.
CHAPTER XIII
FOR LIFE OR DEATH
Ursula sat by herself in the veranda through the sweetly fading silence of the summer Sabbath evening. She had now been back in her tranquil home for more than four-and-twenty hours. It was good for her that her return had heralded the holy calm of that long, sunlight-flooded day of rest. She had slept as young twenty sleeps when worn out, whether from work or weeping; she had risen as young twenty rises, to a world that is bright again. The peace of the familiar village-round was upon her: the drowsy morning service, the droning Sunday-school, the empty afternoon “catechism.” Had her father’s text, she wondered, been inspired by the thought of his absent child at Drum! He had preached on “Keep yourself unspotted from the world.” She desired nothing more ardently. Here was she returned in time to point the moral.
Her hands lay idle in her lap, an emblem of the day’s repose. The whole village had folded its hands to watch the lengthening shadows. A few conspicuous white shirt-sleeves lolled against the church-yard wall. And somewhere a bullfinch was carolling, breaking the Sabbath in his own divinely appointed way.