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When they came in sight of the little cottage, there was smoke coming gayly from the kitchen chimney, and the front door stood widely open. "What is it?" whispered Kittie, in a spasm of curiosity. "A breakfast already for them," answered Olive. "Dr. Barnett has got Huldah, and Bea doesn't know it." Well, dear me, what a jolly confusion did follow.
"Dead," said Trendon bluntly. Then, breaking his own rule of repression, he asked: "Did he come off the schooner with you?" "Picked him up," was the straining answer. "Drifting." The survivor looked around him, then into Barnett's face, and his mind too, traversed the years. "North Dakota?" he queried. "No; I've changed my ship," said Barnett. "This is the Wolverine." "Where's the Laughing Lass?"
This clergyman was a forerunner of his neighbour, the famous Samuel Barnett of Mile End, who thought out, started, and for many years presided over Toynbee House, the first big university settlement in East London. His workers preached their gospel through phrases and creeds which they accepted with mental reservations, but just exactly in such ways as they believed in absolutely.
"That I can quite believe. Still, Mr. Barnett told me that the rector lodged a complaint about it." "He might complain as much as he liked; there is no law in the land, as far as I know, that makes the fixing of a straw-hat upon a weathercock a penal offence. It did no end of good in the village, gave them something to talk about, and woke them up wonderfully."
"Ah!" said Barnett solemnly, "that's more than I can tell." "Or must tell," said Ellis excitedly. "It mustn't even be breathed, Dan Barnett. If my Mary even heard it whispered, she'd go melancholy mad." "Nay, sir, I don't know any more about it, and I arn't a-going to say nowt about it, but if that there poor bairn "
Nevertheless, Young Thomas went on looking at Adelia by fits and starts, although he did not again catch Adelia looking at him. He noticed that she had round rosy cheeks and twinkling brown eyes. She did not look like an old maid, and Young Thomas wondered that she had been allowed to become one. Sarah Barnett, now, to whom report had married him a year ago, looked like a dried sour apple.
Nearly every morning after this he insisted on working in the fields. Sometimes it was with a plow, which he learned to use under the advice of Tobe Barnett, a scythe in the hay-field, or a woodman's ax in the depths of the forests. But still sorrow and shame brooded over him like a material pall that refused to be put aside.
Before the full-flavored North China infusion, which I kept out of Susie's devastating hands, and the little biscuits coming from the most British-looking tin box, I saw the Reverend Basil Barnett, late of Magdalen, gradually becoming permeated by a sense of something that had long been missing from his life.
"Keerful?" cried old Tummus contemptuously: "he did it o' purpose. I know: out o' spite." "Tummus, you're driving us in a coach and four into the workhouse," cried his wife passionately. "Good job too. I don't keer. I say Dan Barnett did it out o' spite, and I'll go straight to the missus and tell her." "No," said John Grange sternly. "Not a word. What you say is impossible.
"Don't make it out at all, sir. 'Tain't any regular and proper light. Looks like a lamp in a fog." Among themselves the officers discussed it interestedly, as it grew plainer. "Not unlike the electric glow above a city, seen from a distance," said Barnett, as it grew plainer. "Yes: but the nearest electric-lighted city is some eight hundred miles away," objected Ives.
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