Champney nodded. "Yes, and so satisfactory—" he drew a long breath; "I have so much to tell it will take half the evening. He wishes to 'pay his respects,' so he says, to my wife and mother, if convenient for the ladies to-morrow—how is it?" He looked with a smile first into the gray eyes and then into the dark ones. In the latter he read silent pleased consent; but Aileen's danced for joy as she answered:
"Convenient! So convenient, that he'll get the surprise of his life from me, anyhow; he really must be made to realize that I am his debtor for the rest of my days—don't I owe the 'one man on earth for me' to him? for would I have ever seen Flamsted but for him? And have I ever forgotten the roses he dropped into the skirt of my dress twenty-one years ago this very month when I sang the Sunday night song for him at the Vaudeville? Twenty-one years! Goodness, but it makes me feel old, mother!"
Aurora Googe smiled indulgently on her daughter, for, at times, Aileen, not only in ways, but looks, was still like the child of twelve.
Champney grew suddenly grave.
"Do you realize, Aileen, that this meeting to-day in the shed is the first in which we three, Father Honoré, Mr. Van Ostend, and I, have ever been together under one roof since that night twenty-one years ago when I first saw you?"
"Why, that doesn't seem possible—but it is so, isn't it? Wasn't that strange!"
"Yes, and no," said Champney, looking at his mother. "I thought of our first meeting one another at the Vaudeville, as we three stood there together in the shed looking upwards to The Gore; and Father Honoré told me afterward that he was thinking of that same thing. We both wondered if Mr. Van Ostend recalled that evening, and the fact of our first acquaintance, although unknown to one another."
"I wonder—" said Aileen, musingly.
Champney spoke abruptly again; there was a note of uneasiness in his voice:
"I wonder what keeps Honoré—I'll just run up the road and see if he's coming. If he isn't, I will go on till I meet the boys. I wish," he added wistfully, "that McCann felt as kindly to me as Billy does to my son; I am beginning to think that old grudge of his against me will never yield, not even to time;—I'll be back in a few minutes."