And when the New Lady had said the faint requiem, we drove on again and the next moment had almost run down Nicholas Moor, lying face downward in the lush grass.
I recognized him at once, but of course the New Lady did not do so, and she leaned from the cart, thoroughly alarmed at the boy's posture and, as he looked up, at his pallor.
"Oh, what is the matter?" she cried, and her voice was so heavenly pitying that one would have been willing to have most things the matter only to hear her.
Nicholas Moor scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and stood abashed, looking as strangely detached from the moment as if he had fallen from a frame and left the rest of the picture behind.
"Nothing. I just like to be here," he was surprised into saying.
The New Lady sat down and smiled. And her smile was even more captivating than had been her late alarm.
"So do I," she told him heartily. "So do I. What do you like about it, best?"
I do not think that any one had ever before spoken to Nicholas so simply, and he answered, chord for chord.
"I guess—I guess I like it just on account of its being the way it is," he said.