his arm. "Come along, Nick," he said. "It's over. We're going."
Ernest led him through the maze of gravestones. His gouty knee gave him some nasty twinges; once or twice he stumbled. Queer how things looked unnatural to him. Even the people who came up to speak to him. The elder Miss Lacey had taken one of his hands in both of hers.
"Dear Nicholas," she said. "It's terrible, isn't it? I know just how you feel! Losing our father as we did, last year. He was ninety-two!"
He looked at her vaguely. He did not see her as she now was, but as she had looked forty-five years ago when she was making up to him, wanting to marry him. He'd have done a sight better if he'd taken her instead of that flyaway creature he had chosen. He'd have had a family, and his father might have left Jalna to him instead of to his younger brother. He rumbled a few words appreciative of her sympathy, and limped on.
A strong wind, smelling of the hot dry land, had sprung up. The long grasses of the graveyard rippled before it joyously. "It is not yet evening," they seemed to sing. The wind swept low, as though to gather fresh sweetness from the roses, lilies, and carnations mounded in the Whiteoak plot. A number of white clouds were borne along the sky in orderly procession, like choristers in snowy surplices. The drone of the organ still came from within the church.
Renny moved urgently toward his car, Wakefield dragging at his arm.
"Renny, Renny, may I drive home with you? I see Eden getting in with Meg and Maurice."
"All right, youngster."
He was glad to have the little boy with him, glad to get away from that place. At the grave-side he had stood with raised head, his eyes on the distance, and again something in his attitude suggested the fear of a sensitive horse toward death. Now he snuffed the wind, pressed Wake's hand against his side, and made an effort to restrain his eagerness to leave that place.
Wakefield said: "I don't think my grandmother could
