“I should have brought him home quite safe,” he told her. “I intended ordering a carriage.”
The girl’s lips shaped formal words of gratitude. Then the obedient humming of the motor deepened to a roar and the car glided swiftly away.
On the opposite corner, her bunched skirts held high, stood Miss Lois Daggett.
“Please wait a minute, Mr. Elliot,” she called. “I’ll walk right along under your umbrella, if you don’t mind.”
Wesley Elliot bowed and crossed the street. “Certainly,” he said.
“I don’t know why I didn’t bring my own umbrella this morning,” said Miss Daggett with a keen glance at Elliot. “That old man stopped in the library awhile ago, and he rather frightened me. He looked very odd and talked so queer. Did he come to the parsonage?”
“Yes,” said Wesley Elliot. “He came to the parsonage?”
“Did he tell you who he was?”
He had expected this question. But how should he answer it?
“He told me he had been ill for a long time,” said the minister evasively.