He remembered the last time he saw her--refusing
to help her from a place of danger in the cedar branches--when he put
his love into a single eloquent phrase: 'You silly ass!' then cast her
adrift for ever because she said 'Thanks awfully,' and gave him a
great wet kiss. But he thought a lot of her all the same, and the
thoughts had continued until the uproar in the City drowned them.
Thoughts crowded thick and fast.
How vital thinking was after all! Nothing seemed able to kill its
eternal pictures. The coincidence of meeting his old tutor again was
like a story-book, though in reality likely enough; for his own face
was not so greatly altered by the close brown beard perhaps; and the
Vicar had grown smaller, that was all. Like everything else, he had
shrunk, of course-like road and station-master and water-works. He had
almost said, 'You, too, have shrunk'--but otherwise was the same old
fluffy personality that no doubt still got sadly muddled in his
sermons, gave out wrong hymns, and spent his entire worldly substance
on his scattered parish. His voice was softer too. It rang in his ears
still, as though there had been no break of over two decades. The hum
of bees and scythes was in it just as when it came through the open
study window while he construed the _Georgics_.
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