"My father——" she began; "you are laughing at us. I know what you mean. We are old-fashioned, behind the times, prejudiced, narrow—I wonder you came."
He laughed. "It was just for that I came. I wanted my little one to have, a beautiful home, and all beside that you have said."
"But you, of course, despise old things! Do you?" she asked—"even that!"
They had reached in their descent of the hill an opening in the trees whence across the field stood out blackly against the luminous western sky the stately cathedral. Fore-shortened against the sky, the great length of the building was not perceptible. But the twin spires, the great central tower, the dome of the chapter-house, and the length of the northern transept, suggested a building raised for all time, if not for eternity.
"That is old," said Marjorie, a world of possessive delight in her voice.
"You share your father's love for it?" he said, turning to look at the face beside him, its fairness accentuated by the evening glow.
"How do you know? You know my father?" And a man less acute than this one would have seen the way straight before him into the girl's heart.
"Don't you think you can know a man in his books?" he asked. "Even if I had not heard him read the paper, I think I should have understood by that little book how he loved the cathedral."
"I did not know you were that sort," she said slowly, as into her eyes there crept a friendliness, which the man, recognising, found very pleasant to meet.
"But I am afraid I am not that sort," he said. "I am ignorant and he is learned. But I can feel the fascination of it. And I want my baby to grow up amongst it all—amongst you all," he corrected. "You remember what Ruskin says about homes? That passage after he has described what houses, homes, should not be, 'tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and mutilated stone, comfortless, unhonoured dwellings which men build in the hope of leaving.' Instead, I would have our homes like temples, built to last, and to be lovely, something God has lent to us for our life, and that our children will love." He paused. "That is the sort of home I want to make for my little one."