"Come, David, hurry!" she cried. "We must be at the gate!" She took his hand, and ran down the path to the gate in the hedge. As she stood there, panting, she pressed her fingers hard on her lips; they must not quiver before the child. She kept her watch in her hand. "It isn't time yet to see them; it will take Jonas ten minutes to get around to the foot of the hill."
Overhead the flicker of locust leaves cast checkering lights and shadows on her white dress and across the strained anxiety of her face. She kept her eyes on her watch, and the ten minutes passed in silence. Then she went out into the road and looked down its length of noon-tide sunshine; the stage was not in sight. "Perhaps," she thought, "it would take twenty minutes to get to the foot of the hill? I'll not look down the road for ten minutes more." After a while she said faintly, "Is it—coming?"
"No'm," David assured her, "Mrs. Richie, what does God eat?"
There was no answer.
"Does he eat us?"
"No, of course not."
"Why not?"
Helena lifted her head, suddenly, "It would take twenty-five minutes—I'm sure it would."
She got up and walked a little way down the road, David tagging thoughtfully behind her. There was no stage in sight. "David, run down the hill to the turn, and look."
The little boy, nothing loath, ran, at the turn he shook his head, and called back, "No'm. Mrs. Richie, He must, 'cause there's nothing goes to heaven but us. Chickens don't," he explained anxiously. But she did not notice his alarm.