Father Honoré interrupted this flow of ejaculatory torrent.
"I've spoken to the Colonel about my going, Mrs. Caukins. He agrees with me that no harm can come of my leaving here for a few days just at this time."
"I'll tell her, Father Honoré; I'm going up this minute with the lemonade; but it's ten to one she won't see you; she wouldn't see the rector last week—oh, dear me!" She groaned and left the room.
She was back again in a few minutes, her eyes wide with excitement.
"She says you can come up, Father Honoré, and you'd better go up quick before she gets a chance to change her mind."
He went without a word. When Mrs. Caukins heard him on the stair and caught the sound of his rap on the door, she turned to Ellen and spoke emphatically, but with trembling lips:
"I don't believe the archangel Gabriel himself could look at you more comforting than Father Honoré does; if he can't help her, the Lord himself can't, and I don't mean that for blasphemy either. Poor soul—poor soul"—she wiped the tears that were rolling down her cheeks,—"here I am the mother of eight children and never had to lose a night's sleep on account of their not doing right, and here's Aurora with her one and can't sleep nor eat for the shame and trouble he's brought on her and all of us—for I'm a Googe. Life seems sometimes to get topsy-turvy, and I for one can't make head nor tail of it. The Colonel's always talking about Nature's 'levelling up,' but I don't see any 'levelling'; seems to me as if she was turning everything up on edge pretty generally.—Give me that rice I saw in the pantry, Ellen; I'm going to make her a little broth; I've got a nice foreshoulder piece at home, and it will be just the thing."
Ellen, rejoicing in such talkative companionship, after the three weeks of dreadful silence in the house, did her bidding, at the same time taking occasion to ask some questions on her own part, among them one which set Mrs. Caukins speculating for a week: "Who do you suppose killed Rag?"
Aurora was in bed, but propped to a sitting position by pillows. When Father Honoré entered she started forward.
"Have you heard anything?" Her voice was weak from physical exhaustion.