The Captain looked up surprised, “Why, yes, with pleasure.”

She came down in her rain-cloak.  “Take a large umbrella, John.  How it blows!”

As they set off in the face of a rain-whipped wind, he said, “Take my arm, Leila—­the other side—­the sound arm.”

“You were in pain at dinner, John.”

“It is my familiar devil, the east wind, but don’t talk of it.”

She understood him, and returned, “I will not if you don’t wish me to talk of it.  Where have you been all these uneasy days?”

“Oh, at the mills.  Uncle refuses to speak of business and I am trying to understand the situation—­some one must.”

“I see—­you must explain it all to me later.”

“I will.  One of the mill men of my Corps needed help.  I have asked Tom to see him.  How depressed Mr. Rivers seems.  Gracious, how it rains!”

“Yes, he is at his worst.  I am sorry you missed his sermon on Sunday—­it was great.  He talked about Lincoln, and used a text I gave him some time ago.”

“What was it?”

“It is in Exodus:  ’Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.’”

John’s ready imagination began for a silent moment to play with the words.  “How did he use it, Leila?”

“Oh, he told the preceding story briefly, and then his great seeking eyes wandered a little and he said, ‘Think how the uplift of God’s eagles’ wings enlarged their horizon!’ Then he seemed to me to have the idea that they might not comprehend, so he made one of those eloquent pauses and went on to say, ’You can all, like Lincoln, rise as he rose from the lesser things of a hard life to see more widely and more surely the duties of life.  The eagle-wings of God’s uplifting power are for you, for me, for all of us.’  He made them understand.”

“I am sorry I missed it.  I spent the Sunday morning with my engineer.”

“Aren’t you getting wet, John?”

“No.  How did he end?”

“What I did not like was the dwelling on Lincoln’s melancholy, and the effort it must have cost him—­at times.  It seemed to me, John, as if he was preaching to himself.  I wonder if clergymen often preach to themselves.  Some of us have to.  The sketch of Lincoln’s life was to me a wonder of terse biography.  At the close he did not dwell on the murder, but just said—­’Then—­and then, my friends, God took him to himself.’”

“Thank you, Leila.  What a lot of wagons—­we must have half the county—­and in this rain too.”

“Now, John, you hate this affair, and so do I; but the Westways people think it great fun, and in the last few years they have had very little.”

“Ni moi non plus, Mademoiselle Grey.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, “I know, John, but make it go—­make it gay, John.  It will soon be over.”

“I will try.”  They left their wet garments in an empty outer room and entering by a side door stood beside the raised platform at the end of the crowded hall.