Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/284

 nap, not for three glasses of his famous Madeira. But how stupid of me! Of course, you are going somewhere and I am keeping you here talking.'

'Oh, I love to talk, and really there is nowhere to go. It doesn't pay not to go to church in the morning, one feels so restless all day.'

'Are you restless?' He asked the question as if it had great meaning for him, and looked at her with his wise little eyes. She had a sudden premonition that if she said she was, the conversation would leave the heights of Transcendentalism, which he had endeavored to elucidate for her, and become purely personal; if she said she was not, they could go on with the interesting philosophical discussion.

'Yes...sometimes, dreadfully restless.' She felt a delicate, imperceptible barrier snap between them. He felt it, too, for he moved a little nearer. Her sensitive nostrils caught the faint and delightful aroma of his riding-clothes, for he had come in from Concord on Minerva, his sturdy bay mare. It brought back wave after wave of tender childhood memories. How lovely they had been, Mamma's sleek horses standing in the Amherst stable, their polished haunches towards you, always peeking back so prettily! Ginger and Ruby, the pair; and Alfred, who grew so fat and lazy; Silk and Satin, how black and dangerous they had been, and how big! She could not have been more than five or six when Mamma had bought them in New York and soon afterwards sold them. And once she had had a white donkey called Moses, and once a spotted Western pony named Dizzy. He had broken