On the occasions when Val tagged after the pair, she was firmly convinced that the tone of her grandmother's conversation was adjusted to young ears. It made her long to shout out: "Oh, he tells me a great deal more than ever he tells you!"
Mrs. Gano would sometimes interrupt her son with scant ceremony and say, glancing back at the child: "Great is the mystery of godliness. There is a point at which the finite mind must stop," and so on.
Val's contempt for this was profound; she felt it was not in alignment with what they had been saying before she came up with them. She would slip her hand into her father's, and squeeze it gently, to restore the sense of secret understanding. They would often, when she was there, talk about the stars, perhaps as being "safe ground," if one may so speak of the plains of heaven.
Did John Gano say, dreamily, "The Polar star is dim to-night," she would as likely as not answer with significance: "Is _it_ dim, or our eyes?"
"No fault of our eyes this time, for we can see Mars well enough. He's in a warlike mood to-night, flaming angrily."
Mrs. Gano would pause, and half to herself repeat:
"'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.'"
"Can you find the Scorpion, little girl?" her father would say.
And if she wasn't quick with eye and answer, her grandmother would stop, lifting her shawled arm with curious unmodern largeness of movement, and point the constellation out, half chanting:
"'By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked serpent.'"
As if gently to divert her attention, the son would perhaps face about, and, walking slowly back with her to the house, would do a little quoting on his own account:
"'Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.'
Ah! the music--the sheer music in that man!"
"There was music before _his_ day. And Tennyson is one of them that hath ears to hear, as well as tongue to speak. Small doubt but from his ivied casement in the West he heard the voice of the Lord from out the chambers of the South. 'Canst thou bind the secret influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his suns?'"