"I'd rather, always, you followed your light, dear friend."
"I do like going here, you know. It seems to belong with it all--and Mummy can't bear our not going."
"It makes your dear mother happy. It all means love to you."
"Not only that"--Oldmeadow imagined that Barney blushed, and he heard his stammer: "I don't know what I believe about everything; but the service goes much deeper than anything I could think for myself." Their voices dropped. All that came further to Oldmeadow was from Miss Toner: "It makes you nearer than if you stayed."
"Confound her ineffability!" he thought. "It rests with her, then, whether he should go or stay."
It certainly did. Barney moved away with them all, leaving Palgrave to the more evident form of proximity.
"You know," Mrs. Chadwick murmured to Oldmeadow as they went, between the primroses, down the little path and through a wicket-gate that led to the village--"you know, Roger, it's _quite_ possible that they may say their prayers together. It's like Quakers, isn't it--or Moravians; or whoever those curious people are who are buried standing up--so dismal and uncomfortable, I always think. But it's better that Palgrave should say his prayers with some one, and somewhere, isn't it, than that he shouldn't say them at all?"
"Mother's got the most poisonous headache," said Meg. "I don't think she'll be able to come down to tea."
She had joined Oldmeadow on the rickety old bench where he sat reading and smoking in a sunny corner of the garden. A band of golden wallflowers behind them exhaled the deep fragrance that he always associated with spring and Sunday and Coldbrooks, and the old stone wall behind the flowers exhaled a warmth that was like a fragrance.
"Adrienne is with her," Meg added. She had seated herself and put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands as though she intended a solid talk.
"Will that be likely to help her head?" Oldmeadow inquired. "I should say not, if she's going to continue the discourse of this morning."
"Did you think all that rather silly?" Meg inquired, tapping her smart toes on the ground and watching them. "You looked as if you did. But then you usually do look as though you thought most things and people silly. I didn't--I mean, not in her. I quite saw what you did; at least I think so. But she can say things that would be silly in other people. Now Palgrave is silly. There's just the difference. Is it because he always feels he's scoring off somebody and she doesn't?" Meg was evidently capable, for all her devotion, of dispassionate inquiry.