Anne grew restless. The peace was disturbed now by this need. At the end of the second month she wrote more insistingly, but this time Belle did not answer.
The leaves began to fall. In the mornings the grass of the meadow was white with frost. The nights were clear, black and cold now with a kind of thrill in the coldness, as if the air were tingling with hidden excitement.
Anne's restlessness increased. Something was creeping upon the world from the places hidden beyond all puny human knowledge.
She no longer sat for hours on the porch, absorbed in the peaceful stillness, but moved about the house or went for long walks. In the evenings she sat with Mary and Timothy, and, although she rarely listened to the words, she liked to hear Timothy read from one of their few books. He read slowly with long pauses instead of comment. These pauses were like caves into which the old people went silently, hand in hand, to look for the deeper truths hidden in words. At the end of these pauses they smiled quietly at each other and the reading began again.
It was one evening in mid-September that a nervous motion of Anne's disturbed the reading and Timothy looked over the steel rim of his spectacles with kindly interest:
"You're worried."
"I'm sorry," Anne apologized. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I was thinking about something else."
Mary Potter leaned across the red-checked cloth and laid her hand on Anne's.
"You were thinking about the baby. Isn't your sister going to send him?"
"I don't know. I can't make it out and I feel so helpless. You won't be going down to Milton again for mail for weeks, will you?"