They saw no more birds, nor did the Squire expect to find anything in the woods except the peace of mind to be secured by violent exercise.  He went on talking about the horses and the mills.

When near to the house, Penhallow said, “Your aunt is to go away to-morrow.  Every day here seems to add to her difficulty in leaving home.  I shall say nothing to her of West Point until it is settled one way or another.  I shall, of course, go to the Cape for a day, unless your aunt’s brother Charles will take my place when he brings Leila to Philadelphia to meet us.  I may be gone a week, and you and Rivers are to keep bachelor’s hall and watch the work on the parsonage.  I shall ask Leila to write to you and to me about your aunt.  Did I say that we go by the 9:30 A.M. express?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, we do.”

James Penhallow was pleased and amazed when he discovered that Mrs. Ann was quietly submissive to the arrangements made for her comfort on the journey.  She appeared to have abruptly regained her good temper and, Penhallow thought, was unnaturally and excessively grateful for every small service.  Being unused to the ways of sick women, he wondered as the train ran down the descent from the Allegheny Mountains how long a time was required to know any human being entirely.  He had been introduced within two weeks to two Ann Penhallows besides the Ann he had lived with these many years.  He concluded, as others have done, that people are hard to understand, and thus thinking he ran over in mind the group they left on the platform at Westways Crossing.

There was Billy—­apparently a simple character, abruptly capable of doing unexpected things; useful to-day, useless tomorrow.  He called up to mind the very competent doctor; John, and his friend—­the moody clergyman—­beloved of all men.  The doctor had said of him, “a man living in the monastery of himself—­in our world, but not of it.”

“What amuses you, James?” asked his wife.

This good sign of return to her normal curiosity was familiarly pleasant.  “I was recalling, Ann, what McGregor said of Rivers after that horrid time of sickness at Westways.  You may remember it.”

“No, I do not.”

“No!  He said that Rivers was a round-shouldered angel.”

“That does not seem to me amusing, James.”

“Round-shouldered he is, Ann, and for the rest you at least ought to recognize your heavenly fellow-citizens when you meet them.”

“Is that your poetry or your folly, James Penhallow?”

“Mine, my dear?  No language is expansive enough for McGregor when he talks about you.”

“Nonsense, James.  He knows how to please somebody.  We were discussing Mark Rivers.”

“Were we?  Then here is a nice little dose from the doctor for you.  Last Christmas, after you had personally sat up with old Mrs. Lamb when she was so ill, and until I made a row about it—­”