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Lavendar's presence a condition of the interview. At half-past seven Mr. Wright arrived. He was in a shiny box-buggy, behind a smart sorrel. He was dressed in his black and solemn best, and he wore his high hat with a flat brim which only came out at funerals. His dignity was so tremendous that his great bulk seemed to take even more than its share of room in the buggy.
The result was that the Robertses and their one woman servant, Hannah, had been living on the Perryville pike for some months before anybody in either village was quite aware of their existence. Then one day in May, Dr. Lavendar's sagging old buggy pulled up at their gate, and the old minister called over the garden wall to Philippa: "Won't you give me some of your apple blossoms?"
Lavendar's stern lip trembled with anxiety. "What?" "I chastised him; a little." "You what?" Benjamin Wright nodded; the wrinkled pouches under his eyes grew dully red. "My God!" he said plaintively; "think of that a hasty moment! Thirty-two years; my God! I spanked him." Dr. Lavendar opened his lips to speak, but found no words. "And he was offended! Offended? What right had he to be offended?
The end came the week that David was staying at the Rectory; and perhaps Dr. Lavendar's pitying absorption in that dreary dying, made him give less thought to the pleasure as well as the perplexity of the child's presence; though certainly, when he got back from his daily visit at The Top, he found David a great comfort. Dr. Lavendar stopped twice that week to see Mrs.
Martha looked at him with a queer shyness in her married eyes, then tossed her head a little and thrust her darning-needle into the gray stocking with a jaunty air. "That's what you used to say," she said. After a while, noticing his tired lounge in the old chair, she said kindly, "Why did you stay so long at Dr. Lavendar's, Willy? You look tired. Do go to bed."
"At heart she's young and beautiful still . . . and if we only knew how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again. But we don't know how . . . it's always and only the prince who knows that . . . and Miss Lavendar's prince hasn't come yet. Perhaps some fatal mischance has befallen him . . . though THAT'S against the law of all fairy tales."
"Who is he? I didn't think there was anybody of that name in Avonlea." Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness. She had forgotten about Miss Lavendar's old romance when Paul's name slipped out. "He is a little pupil of mine," she explained slowly. "He came from Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving of the shore road." "Is he Stephen Irving's son?"
Lavendar's one certainty, Love, he was deeply ignorant, this honest boy, who was so concerned for Philippa's father's soul!
"Must I, to get him?" she gasped. "No," Johnny said; "it is quite unnecessary." He smiled, so cruelly that his father's hands clenched; but Mary only said, in passionate relief, "Oh, you are good!" And the hope in Doctor Lavendar's eyes flickered out. "Nothing will ever be known?" her son repeated, still smiling. "Well, then, Mrs. Robertson, I thank you for 'nothing."
Lavendar had made up his mind that a matter of this kind cannot be forced. A thirty-two-year-old wound is not to be healed in a day. He took any chance that offered to drop a suggestive word; but he did not try to hurry his Heavenly Father. For it was Dr. Lavendar's belief that God was more anxious about that reconciliation than he was....
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