"Don't worry. I wouldn't teach him or any other living soul a thing. He'll get enough of that before long, poor little devil. This place reeks with instruction."
"But you've escaped," Roger teased on; "the first axiom of the Social Revolution never got under your skin."
"Oh, yes it did. Only it started to fester—and I cut it out." On that she went whistling, the green tam pulled coquettishly to one side.
When Anne was home again Merle kept her promise. At first she stayed only a few moments, but gradually the habit formed for her to drop in late in the afternoon, several times a week. As Anne grew stronger and began again to get regular meals, she often let Merle undress Rogie and make him ready for bed. It seemed to please the girl to take off the tiny garments and feel the soft, warm roundness of the strong little body.
One night in mid-October, a warm evening of glowing sunset, Anne came into the bedroom from the kitchen at the sound of Merle's low crooning. Merle's single song was Tipperary and she had mangled the martial notes to a strange lullaby. Anne laughed and Merle turned quickly, Rogie clasped tight as if from intrusion. Then she laughed, too, not quite so gayly as Anne, and together they put him to bed. When he was tucked in and the window open, Merle followed Anne back to the kitchen.
"Did you really want Rogie, Anne, or was he an accident?"
Anne flushed at the unwarranted intimacy. But Merle was leaning against the wall, her full throat rising so young and white from her brilliant smock, her eyes so serious, that Anne relented.
"I wanted him," she said hastily.
Merle did not answer for a moment. She seemed to be looking at something in no way connected with Anne.
"I wonder if it would have worked out all right—if I had gone ahead. But I haven't your grit, Anne. And I was bugs about Tom; oh, nuts, simply nuts. I believed he was God. If he'd told me to jump off the ferry boat, I'd have done it without waiting to ask him why." There was no bitterness, just the bewildered statement of a fact, a fact that had once been true and that Merle wished were true now.