Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good
and control him? he thought. I will go and see her on my way to
Misselthwaite.
But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at the
cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered in a
group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies told him
that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor early in the
morning to help a woman who had a new baby. Our Dickon, they
volunteered, was over at the Manor working in one of the gardens where
he went several days each week.
Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies and round
red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular way, and he
awoke to the fact that they were a healthy likable lot. He smiled at
their friendly grins and took a golden sovereign from his pocket and
gave it to our Lizabeth Ellen who was the oldest.
If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for
each of, you, he said.
Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away,
leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.
The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing thing.
Why did it seem to give him a sense of homecoming which he had been
sure he could never feel again that sense of the beauty of land and sky
and purple bloom of distance and a warming of the heart at drawing,
nearer to the great old house which had held those of his blood for six
hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last time, shuddering
to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in the four-posted bed
with the brocaded hangings. Was it possible that perhaps he might find
him changed a little for the better and that he might overcome his
shrinking from him? How real that dream had been how wonderful and
clear the voice which called back to him, In the garden In the
garden!
I will try to find the key, he said. I will try to open the door. I
must though I don t know why.
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