Again Hilda and James consulted on a problem they had evidently discussed often. Their glances reached a decision and James said:
"Annie, do you suppose that things between you and Roger could be patched up? Me and mother have talked about it quite a lot. I don't hold with Roger—I never did," there was a touch of the old intolerance which a look from Hilda softened and James went on. "But he's young and there's this to be said for him—the rubbish he believes in is in the air. It's like an epidemic. But there's no reason he shouldn't outgrow it. You can do a lot."
Anne sat holding Rogie and fingering her teaspoon absently.
"I don't want him to outgrow it, papa. I don't want him to be anything but himself."
"No, of course you don't," Hilda broke in with the familiar manner of smoothing a family difference that had once annoyed Anne. But now it did not annoy her. She would have to face, once at least, this discussion of herself and Roger and she might as well do it now. Besides, it clarified her own thought to talk patiently in this way.
"Roger was one kind of person," she went on, "and I was another. Roger saw things—in—in sweeps while I saw them in spots."
The definition was exact to Anne but her father and mother looked bewildered.
"I mean that we really both want the same thing, only we wanted to get it differently. I think—it's harder for two people to agree in their methods—than in their aims. If Roger had been a Jew and I had been a Catholic——"
"Why, Anne!" Hilda was so horrified, that amusement touched Anne's very earnest wish to get this thing perfectly straight to them.
"I'm only supposing, moms, making the wildest example I can think of."