They slowly paced by the house, and began to go down the sweep towards the other gate.
"Alone with these two servants for five months!" Mr. Southwode said.
"Rotha, what sort of a life have you been living all this while?"
"I do not know," said the girl catching her breath. "Rather queer. I suppose it has been good for me."
"What makes you suppose that?"
"I think I can feel that it has."—But Rotha added no more.
"Is confidence between us not fully reestablished?" he asked with a smile.
"O yes—if you care to know," Rotha answered hesitatingly, at the same time finding herself ready to slide back into the old habit of being very open with him.
"I care to know—if you like to tell me."
"It has been a queer life," she repeated. "I have been living between two things, my Bible, and the garden. There was an interval of some weeks not long ago, when Mrs. Purcell was sick; and then I lived largely in the kitchen."
"Go on, and tell me—But how can you go on!" Mr. Southwode found himself approaching the gate and road again, and suddenly broke off. "I cannot keep you standing here by the hour, and a little time will not do for us. Pray, if you have no place to take me to, where do you yourself live?"