ant.
"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--"

"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, stumbli