Somehow every time she saw him he seemed less like her old playmate, Cœur-de-Lion, and transformed into an older and graver Richard; perhaps it might be that the halo of the future priesthood already surrounded him; but for whatever reason it might be, Ethel was certainly less dictatorial and argumentative in her demeanour towards him, and that a very real friendship seemed growing up between them.
Richard was more than two-and-twenty now, and Roy just a year younger; in another eight months he would be ordained deacon; as yet he had made no sign, but as Mildred sat pondering over the retrospect of the three last years in the golden and dreamy afternoon, she was driven to confess that her boys were now men, doing men's work in the world, and to wonder, with womanly shrinkings of heart, what the future might hold out to them of good and evil.
CHAPTER XVIII
OLIVE'S WORK
'Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
'Who through long days of labour
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
'Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.'—Longfellow.
'Aunt Milly, the book has come!'