"Call it what you like," said Miss Toner. She still smiled--but more gravely. Barney had ceased to stroll and kick. He had come to a standstill beside them, and, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on his beloved, showed himself as completely reassured. Palgrave still stood on the step above her and seemed to watch the snowy, piled-up clouds that adorned the tranquil sky. "I feel it a mistake to make unreal things seem real by giving them big names. We become afraid of them and fear is what impedes us most of all in life. For so many generations humanity has seen ghosts in the evening mists and taken its indigestion for the promptings of a demon. We've got away from all that now, Mr. Oldmeadow. We see that mists are mists and indigestion indigestion, and that there aren't such things as ghosts and demons. We've come out, all together, hand in hand, on the Open Road and we don't want, ever any more, to be reminded, even, of the Dark Ages."
Before her fluency, Oldmeadow felt himself grow less kindly. "You grant there have been dark ages, then? I count that a concession. Things may not be evil now, but they were once."
"Not a concession at all," said Miss Toner. "Only an explanation of what has happened--an explanation of what you call the mess, Mr. Oldmeadow."
"So that when we find ourselves misbehaving to one another as we march along the Open Road, we may know it's only indigestion and take a pill."
She didn't like badinage. That, at all events, was evident to him, even in her imperturbability. She took it calmly--not lightly; and if she was not already beginning to dislike him, it was because disliking people was a reality she didn't recognize. "We don't misbehave if we are on the Open Road," she said.
"Oh, but you're falling back now on good old-fashioned theology," Oldmeadow retorted. "The sheep, saved and well-behaved, keeping to the road, and the goats--all those who misbehave and stray--classed with the evening mists."
"No," said Miss Toner eyeing him, "I don't class them with the evening mists; I class them with the sick, whom we must be kind to and take care of."
Mrs. Chadwick was now emerging in her new spring hat, which was not very successful and gave emphasis to her general air of strain. Meg's hat was very successful, as Meg's hats always were; and if Nancy's did not shine beside it, it was, at all events, exceedingly becoming to her. Nancy's eyes went to Barney. Barney, in the past, had been very appreciative of becoming hats. But he had no eyes for Nancy now. He had drawn Miss Toner aside and Oldmeadow heard their colloquy: