"Please ask him to teach me," he said.
For a moment Mrs Quantock did not answer, but cocked her head sideways
in the direction of the pear-tree where a thrush was singing. It fluted
a couple of repeated phrases and then was silent again.
Mrs Quantock gave a great smile to the pear-tree.
"Thank you, little brother," she said.
She turned to Georgie again.
"That comes out of St. Francis," she said, "but Yoga embraces all that
is true in every religion. Well, I will ask my Guru whether he will
take you as a pupil, but I can't answer for what he will say."
"What does he--what does he charge for his lesson?" asked Georgie.
The Christian Science smile illuminated her face again.
"The word 'money' never passes his lips," she said. "I don't think he
really knows what it means. He proposed to sit on the green with a
beggar's bowl but of course I would not permit that, and for the
present I just give him all he wants. No doubt when he goes away, which
I hope will not be for many weeks yet, though no one can tell when he
will have another call, I shall slip something suitably generous into
his hand, but I don't think about that. Must you be going? Good night,
dear Georgie. Peace! Om!"
His last backward glance as he went out of the front door revealed her
standing on one leg again, just as he had seen her first. He remembered
a print of a fakir at Benares, standing in that attitude; and if the
stream that flowed into the Avon could be combined with the Ganges, and
the garden into the burning ghaut, and the swooping swallows into the
kites, and the neat parlour-maid who showed him out, into a Brahmin,
and the Chinese gong that was so prominent an object in the hall into a
piece of Benares brassware, he could almost have fancied himself as
standing on the brink of the sacred river.
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