They were too beautiful
to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this hour.
This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect of my being
plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be among us.
It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward
than anything else that might be for me. There appears to me,
moreover, as I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary
than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph,
I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in truth
have been, I now reflect, that I didn't in these days hate them!
Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed,
finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived.
I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings
to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation.
It was at least change, and it came with a rush.
XIV
Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my side
and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose's, well in sight.
It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time;
the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright and sharp,
made the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of thought
that I should have happened at such a moment to be particularly
and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges.
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