Judith stayed that night; Aunt Rody slept well, and arose in the morning at her usual early hour. She made no allusion to the marriage that day, nor as long as she lived.
XXIII. VOICES.
“The love for me once crucified,
Is not a love to leave my side,
But waiteth ever to divide
Each smallest care of mine.”
The three were in the study that Sunday afternoon that the Meadow Centre minister exchanged with Roger Kenney; the minister, the hostess, and the girl at boarding-school. The boarding-school girl had a book in her lap with her finger between the leaves, listening.
“Mr. King talks as though he had never had any one to talk to before,” Judith thought as she watched the two and listened.
His conversation was filled with bits of information, with incident, with a thought now and then, absorbingly interesting to a school-girl.
Roger loved people better than he loved books; Judith had not outgrown her books, and grown into loving people. The Meadow Centre minister was a chapter in a most fascinating book; he was the hero of a story; he was not a being of flesh and blood like Roger. She was afraid every moment the book would shut and she would read no more of his story; “to be continued” would end this chapter, and then she might never see the end of the book.