Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/98

 come to bury was loved or whether it was simply a relative from whom you were likely to inherit. He was a bachelor who had no life save that which centered about the iron stove; yet he knew the Town in a way that no one else knew it because he was always near to the root of all things.

Philip knew that the group about the stove were saying, "There goes Emma Downes' boy who went to Africa for a missionary. He was always a queer one—not a bit like Emma."

And then they would launch into talk about the old story of Jason Downes and his fantastic disappearance into the depths of China, where he had escaped in the end the last ministrations of McTavish. They knew everything, those old men. Each one was a walking history of the Town.

Philip, half a block off now, began to feel that sense of life which somehow sustained them. He began to feel people, ambitions, jealousies, loves and hatreds, stirring all about him in a strange, complicated maze.

Naomi was waiting for him, dressed to go out. She had put on a thick blue veil because, Philip suspected, she did not want to be recognized.

"Your Ma wants us to eat at the restaurant," she said, and together they set out in silence.

Miraculously they met no one on the way, and once inside the big, white, clean restaurant, Emma led them to the table where, shielded by a screen from draughts, she always ate. The restaurant began to fill with customers—clerks, lawyers, mill-employees, shopkeepers, farmers and their wives in from the country for the day—all lured by the excellent food supplied by Emma. After a time the tables were all filled and people stood