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He broke a bit of fragrant spray from the flowering currant which guarded the doorway on his side of the steps; Ewbert sat next the Spanish willow and softly twisted the stem between his thumb and finger. "Ever hear how I came to leave Hilbrook, West Mallow, as it was then?" he asked at last.
You can imagine conditions in which there shall be no fear, in which love casteth out fear?" "Well," said Hilbrook provisionally. Ewbert had not thought of these points himself before, and he was pleased with his discovery, though afterwards he was aware that it was something like an intellectual juggle.
It should not be difficult to overcome it; but Ewbert had not yet succeeded in arraying his reasons satisfactorily against it when his wife returned from her work in the kitchen, and sat down beside the library table. Her coming operated a total diversion, in which Hilbrook lapsed into his apathy, and was not to be roused from it by the overtures to conversation which she made.
"That will give him something to think about. What did he say?" Ewbert had been less and less satisfied with his reply to Hilbrook, in which it seemed to him that he had passed from mockery to reproof, with no great credit to himself; and his wife's applause now set the seal to his displeasure with it.
The fact is, I've been overdoing in every way, and nobody is to blame for my morbid fancies but myself. I should blame myself very severely if you based any sort of superstition on them, and acted from that superstition." "Oh, you needn't be afraid!" said Mrs. Ewbert. "I shall take care of his feelings, but I shall have my own opinions, all the same, Clarence."
It did not surprise her that any one should do anything for the love of Ewbert, but it is doubtful if she fully recognized the beauty of this last efflorescence of the aged life; and she perceived it her duty not to sympathize entirely with Ewbert's morbid regret that it came too late. She was much more resigned than he to the will of Providence, and she urged a like submissiveness upon him.
Ewbert noticed how he had dropped more and more into the vernacular, in these reminiscences; in their controversies he had used the language of books and had spoken like a cultivated man, but now he was simply and touchingly rustic. "Well," he resumed, "that wore out, too. I went into business, and I made money and I lost it.
Hilbrook was a farmer, so far as he was anything industrially, and Ewbert tried him with questions of crops, soils, and fertilizers; but he tried him in vain. The old man said he had never cared much for those things, and now it was too late for him to begin.
The spring had advanced so far that there were now days when it was pleasant to be out in the soft warmth of the afternoons. The day when Ewbert climbed to the Hilbrook homestead it was even a little hot, and he came up to the dooryard mopping his forehead with his handkerchief, and glad of the southwestern breeze which he caught at this point over the shoulder of the hill.
Ewbert had forgotten the points he had made before, and he had to take up the whole subject anew, he did so at first in an involuntarily patronizing confidence that Hilbrook was ignorant of the ground; but from time to time the old man let drop a hint of knowledge that surprised the minister.
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