“Yes—­yes—­I know.”  Her curiosity got the better of her dislike of being praised for what to her was a simple duty, and she added, “Well, what did he say?”

“Oh, that you and Rivers were like angels gone astray in the strange country called earth; and then that imp of a boy, John, who says queer things, said that it was like a bit of verse Rivers had read to him.  He knew it too.  I liked it and got him to write it out.  I have it in my pocket-book.  Like to see it?”

“No,” she returned—­and then—­“yes,” as she reflected that it must have originally applied to another than herself.

He was in the habit of storing in his pocket-book slips from the papers—­news, receipts for stable-medicine, and rarely verse.  Now and then he emptied them into the waste basket.  He brought it out of his pocket-book and she read it: 

As when two angel citizens of Heaven
Swift winged on errands of the Master’s love
Meet in some earthly guise.

“Is that all of it?”

“No, John could not remember the rest, and I did not ask Mark.”

“I should suppose not.  Thank you for believing it had any application to me.  And, James, I have been a very cross angel of late.”

“Oh, my dear Ann, Dr. McGregor said—­”

“Never mind Dr. McGregor, James.  Go and smoke your cigar.  I am tired and I must not talk any more—­talking on a train always tires me.”

Two days after the departure of his aunt and uncle, John persuaded Rivers to walk with him on the holiday morning of Saturday.  The clergyman caring little for the spring charm of the maiden summer, but much for John Penhallow’s youth of promise, wandered on slowly through the woods, with head bent forward, stumbling now and then, lost to a world where his companion was joyfully conscious of the prettiness of new-born and translucent foliage.

Always pleased to sit down, Rivers dropped his thin length of body upon the brown pine-needles near the cabin and settling his back against a fallen tree-trunk made himself comfortable.  As usual, when at rest, he began to talk.

“John,” he said, “you and Tom McGregor had a quarrel long ago—­and a fight.”

“Yes, sir,” returned John wondering.

“I saw it—­I did not interfere at once—­I was wrong.”

This greatly amused John.  “You stopped it just in time for me—­I was about done for.”

“Yes, but now, John, I have talked to Tom, and—­I am afraid you have never made it up.”

“No, he was insolent to Leila and rude.  But we had a talk about it—­oh, a good while ago—­before she went away.”

“Oh, had you!  Well, what then?”

“Oh, he told me you had talked to him and he had seen Leila and told her he was sorry.  She never said a word to me.  I told him that he ought to have apologized to me—­too.”

Rivers was amused.  “Apologies are not much in fashion among Westways boys.  What did he say?”