He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother.  How could he speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he wanted to make a new world for her?  That he had longed for it through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what he was keeping his probation for?

So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing.

After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so, giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break in that paltry way?  And by and by, when the journey is over, do we not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time?  Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of whatever is really within us.  God’s own love is broken small for us.  “This is my Body, broken for you.”

If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness.

Sylvie had a handful of checks; Rodney took them from her, and went out to the end of the platform to find the boxes.  Two vehicles had been driven over from Hill-hope to meet her; an open spring-wagon for the luggage, and a chaise-top buggy to convey herself.

Trunks, boxes, and the great padlocked basket were speedily piled upon the wagon; then the two men who had come jumped up together to the front seat of the same, and Sylvie saw that it was left for her and Rodney to proceed together for the seven-mile drive.

Rodney came back to her with an alert and felicitous air.  How could he help the falling out of this?  Of course he could not ride upon the wagon and leave a farm-boy to charioteer Sylvie.

“Shall you be afraid of me?” he asked, as he tossed in his valise for a footstool, and carefully bestowed Sylvie’s shawl against the back, to cushion her more comfortably.  “Do you suppose we can manage to get over there without running down a bake-shop?”

“Or a cider-mill,” said Sylvie, laughing.  “You will have to adapt your exploits to circumstances.”

Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the descending wheels.  Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils.  She was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving.

The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of song gushed forth.