"Don't you ever lunch?" he asked.
"Yes; I tasted the soup. You lunch at one at the inn."
"I suppose so. What a charming country this is—this little hamlet of Saïs! Such exquisite peace and stillness I have seldom known."
Sister Eila's eyes grew vague; she looked out through the sunny doorway across the fields towards a range of low hills. The quarries were there.
"It is a tranquil country," she said pensively, "but there is misery, too. Life in the quarries is hard, and wages are not high."
"Mr. Warner tells me they are a hard lot, these quarrymen."
"There is intemperance among the quarrymen, and among the cement workers, too: and there is roughness and violence—and crime, sometimes. But it is a very hard métier, Mr. Halkett, and the lime dust blinds and sears and incites a raging thirst. God knows there is some excuse for the drunkenness there. We who are untempted must remain gentle in our judgments."
"I could not imagine Sister Eila judging anybody harshly."
Sister Eila looked up and laughed:
"Oh, Mr. Halkett, I have confessed to impatience too many times to believe that I could ever acquire patience. Only today I scolded our children because they tore down a poster which had been pasted on the public wall at the crossroad. I said to them very severely, 'It is a sin to destroy what others have paid for to advertise their merchandise.'"