“Does it?” said Anne. “Perhaps the flowers enjoy one another—who knows? And perhaps you and I and the rest of us are not all the beings of earth. Why should we think everything is meant only for us?”
“Sakes alive! Miss Anne, but you have got some queer notions. To think of folks you can’t see smelling around among the flowers! Suppose you was to bump heads when you were smelling of them. It gives me the creeps to think of it. Hope I’ll never run against one of them. Must you go? Well, I’m right sorry. When you and Mrs. Lyndsay and the rest go away, my old head will have a long rest.”
“Shall I send you some books?”
“No. I shouldn’t read them. I don’t set much store by books, without I have some one to talk to, and poor Hiram is as mum as a stone. That’s the worst of our long winter. Only last night I was reading the Bible,—I do read that, Miss Anne,—and I came upon where Christ wrote on the sand. I just said to myself I would wait about that till I saw you. I did want to talk it over right away.”
“And what is it you want to ask?”
“What do you suppose Christ wrote in the sand?”
“Who can tell that, Dorothy?”
“But it must have meant— Why did he do it?”
“I suppose,” said Anne, thoughtfully, “that he wanted to let the woman think over what he had said. When you think of the eyes of Christ looking at you, Dorothy, you might understand.”
“I see, Miss Anne. That woman she felt awful bad, I guess, and he only wanted not to seem to take notice. I wouldn’t ha’ thought of that in a year, not if I stayed awake all night every night.”