Aileen watched him out of sight; then she turned to Aurora Googe.
"We are blest in this turn of affairs, aren't we, mother? This meeting is the one thing Champney has been dreading—and yet longing for. I'm glad it's over."
"So am I; and I am inclined to think Father Honoré brought it about; if you remember, he said nothing about Mr. Van Ostend's being here when he stopped just now."
"So he didn't!" Aileen spoke in some surprise; then she added with a joyous laugh: "Oh, that dear man is sly—bless him!"—But the tears dimmed her eyes.
II
"Go straight home with Honoré, Billy, as straight as ever you can," said Father Honoré to eight-year-old Billy McCann who for the past year had constituted himself protector of five-year-old Honoré Googe; "I'll watch you around the power-house."
Little Honoré reached up with both arms for the usual parting from the man he adored. The priest caught him up, kissed him heartily, and set him down again with the added injunction to "trot home."
The two little boys ran hand in hand down the road. Father Honoré watched them till the power-house shut them from sight; then he waited for their reappearance at the other corner where the road curves downward to the highroad. He never allowed Honoré to go alone over the piece of road between the point where he was standing and the power-house, for the reason that it bordered one of the steepest and roughest ledges in The Gore; a careless step would be sure to send so small a child rolling down the rough surface. But beyond the power-house, the ledges fell away very gradually to the lowest slopes where stood, one among many in the quarries, the new monster steel derrick which the men had erected last week. They had been testing it for several days; even now its powerful arm held suspended a block of many tons' weight. This was a part of the test for "graduated strain"—the weight being increased from day to day.
The men, in leaving their work, often took a short cut homeward from the lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there was the added inducement of close proximity to the wonderful new derrick that, since its instalment, had been occupying many of Billy's waking thoughts.