"Nonsense, James. He knows how to please somebody. We were discussing
Mark Rivers."
"Were we? Then here is a nice little dose from the doctor for you. Last Christmas, after you had personally sat up with old Mrs. Lamb when she was so ill, and until I made a row about it—"
"Yes—yes—I know." Her curiosity got the better of her dislike of being praised for what to her was a simple duty, and she added, "Well, what did he say?"
"Oh, that you and Rivers were like angels gone astray in the strange country called earth; and then that imp of a boy, John, who says queer things, said that it was like a bit of verse Rivers had read to him. He knew it too. I liked it and got him to write it out. I have it in my pocket-book. Like to see it?"
"No," she returned—and then—"yes," as she reflected that it must have originally applied to another than herself.
He was in the habit of storing in his pocket-book slips from the papers—news, receipts for stable-medicine, and rarely verse. Now and then he emptied them into the waste basket. He brought it out of his pocket-book and she read it:
As when two angel citizens of Heaven
Swift winged on errands of the Master's love
Meet in some earthly guise.
"Is that all of it?"
"No, John could not remember the rest, and I did not ask Mark."
"I should suppose not. Thank you for believing it had any application to me. And, James, I have been a very cross angel of late."