"Was she? Poor little soul! The idea of a child crying for me! It's quite a novel experience!" And Maryllia laughed--"But I don't think I'm wanted at all in the village. Mr. Walden does everything."
"So he does!"--agreed Stanways--"He's a true 'minister' if there ever was one. Still, he has not been quite so much about lately."
"No?" queried Maryllia--"I expect he's very busy!"
"I think he has only one wish in the world!" said Mrs. Stanways, smiling.
"What is that?" asked Maryllia, still stroking 'Cleopatra's' glossy neck thoughtfully.
"To fill the big rose-window in the church with stained glass,--real 'old' stained glass! He's always having some bits sent to him, and I believe he passes whole hours piecing it together. It's his great hobby. He won't have a morsel that is not properly authenticated. He's dreadfully particular,--but then all old bachelors are!"
Maryllia smiled, and bidding them good-morning cantered off. She was curiously touched at the notion of old Josey Letherbarrow missing her, and 'Baby Hippolyta' crying for her.
"Not one of my society friends would miss me!"--she said to herself- -"And certainly I know nobody who would cry for me!" She checked her thoughts--"Except Cicely. SHE would miss me,--SHE would cry for me! But, in plain matter-of-fact terms, there is no one else who cares for me. Only Cicely!"
She looked up as she rode, and saw that she was passing the 'Five Sisters,' now in all the glorious panoply of opulent summer leafage. Moved by a sudden impulse, she galloped up the knoll, and drew rein exactly at the spot where she had given Oliver Leach his dismissal, and where she had first met John Walden. The wind rustled softly through the boughs, which bent and swayed before her, as though the grand old trees said: 'Thanks to you, we live!' Birds flew from twig to twig,--and the persistent murmur of many bees working amid the wild thyme which spread itself in perfumed purple patches among the moss and grass, sounded like the far-off hum of a human crowd.
"I did something useful when I saved you, you dear old beeches!" she said--"But the worst of it is I've done nothing worth doing since!"
She sighed, and her pretty brows puckered into a perplexed line, as she slowly guided 'Cleopatra' down the knoll again.
"It's all so lonely!" she murmured--"I felt just a little dull before Eva Beaulyon and the others came,--but it's ever so much duller with them than without them!"