"Confess, now, it was the little bird's message which brought you!" said Miss Chatterton, wagging a warning finger, and trying to look jocose.
"The message was to my fellow-traveller, and was not of a cheery character, I regret to say; it came by the usual prosaic medium of the post. I did not care to linger behind and return alone, so here I am, quite ready for work again."
Miss Chatterton gave a little shake of the head, thus politely intimating that she should believe as much as she chose, then said—
"We have got our great man back again, you see; he is burning with zeal and brimming over with good intentions towards Rathbury, and, I suppose, means to cram three years' good doing into one, in order to make amends for neglect and absence."
"I believe Mr. Mitchelson has never neglected to furnish the means for helping his poor neighbours, though Mr. Harvey has been the channel for conveying it to them."
"Ah, yes. It is so easy merely to give money when we have more than we know what to do with. But personal effort, the kind word and look which sweeten even the smallest gift, are often more valued than coin or domestic comforts. No one knows that better than you do, Mr. Gilmour. Well! We must not look back, but be thankful for present favours; we have Mr. Mitchelson amongst us, and, if I am not mistaken, he has found something sufficiently attractive to keep him here."
Miss Chatterton's second shaft was more skilfully aimed than her first. It went straight home, and so, after a very short interval, did Mr. Gilmour.
He gave a hurried glance through the tents, then pleading the weariness consequent on a long journey, he hastened to his rooms, feeling as if the sunshine were gone out of his life, and regretting that his engagement with Mr. Harvey would bind him to Rathbury for the greater part of a year to come.
Weeks passed on and shaped themselves into months. Everybody saw that Mr. Gilmour was an altered man in many ways; more than ever devoted to his work, he was more solitary in it. The little wall of separation of which Miss Chatterton had so successfully laid the foundation on the day of the Flower Show, had been growing in solidity. It might be an invisible one to outer eyes, but it was an equally real thing to Elsie and himself.
She, poor child! Helped the structure by laying thereon the materials for its increase. First doubt of Gilmour's real sentiments, then self-reproach for having too easily yielded her young heart to his keeping; then the mistake about Katie; then the sense of sisterly love and self-devotion, to which she looked as her one consolation amidst the wreck of her happiness.