queerly and almost audibly. With every step that she took back toward
him she grew strangely happy and strangely angry.

He silently arranged a seat for her beside him and she sat down, folded
her hands in her lap, looked off at the village roofs and waited.

He looked at her a long time. For Nanny was good to look at. Then he
began to talk in an odd, quiet way as if they two were at home alone
and the world was shut out and far away. And he told her the story of
that locked drawer in Hen Tomlins' chiffonier.

That drawer and Hen's growing stubbornness, due no doubt to the gradual
coming on of his serious illness, had very nearly been the death of
poor, dictatorial Agnes Tomlins. She had always picked out Hen's
shirts, bought his ties and ordered his suits and Hen had never
rebelled openly. Nor did he, so far as she knew, ever dare to have a
thought, a memory or a possession of which she was not fully informed.

But this last year Hen had become secretive, openly rebellious,
strangely despondent, with now and then flashes of a very real and
unpleasant temper. Agnes, baffled, curious, hurt, angry and afraid,
had at last taken her burden to the boyish minister and then went in
trembling triumph to Hen and told him what she had done.

"Yes," Hen told her quietly, "I know. He was in here when you went to
the drug store and told me. He advised me to open that drawer and let
you see what's in it. And I'll do it to please him. But I won't open
it myself and he's the only one I'll let do it. So just you send for
him. As long as you told him, I want him to see there's nothing in
that drawer that I need to be ashamed of."