She turned to find the elder Mr. Warlock beside her.
"You will forgive my speaking to you, Miss Cardinal. I saw you at
our Chapel this morning."
His great height towered above her short clumsy figure; he seemed to
peer down at her from above his snowy beard as though he were the
inhabitant of some other world. His voice was of an extreme
kindliness and his eyes, when she looked up at him, shone with
friendliness. She found herself, to her own surprise, talking to him
with great ease. He was perfectly simple, human and unaffected. He
asked her about her country.
"I spend my days in longing to get back to my own place--and perhaps
I shall never see it again. I was born in Wiltshire--Salisbury
Plain. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, they all
were ministers of our Chapel there before me. They had no thought in
their day of London. I have always missed that space, the quiet. I
shall always miss it. Towns are not friendly to me."
She told him about St. Dreots, a little about her father.
"Ah, you're lucky!" he said. "You'll return many times before you
die--and you'll find no change there.
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