"Nan, yes. Do you see mother walking five miles to a train?" But if Dick was unsettled, this was not his surly mood of the night before. "If I drove her away"—he began, and then ended with an appealingness to be remembered of the Dick who had not been nettled by life, "Jack, I wish she wouldn't."
"I'll ask Charlotte," said Raven. "Your mother out yet? No? Well, don't bring her into it."
He went off to the kitchen where Charlotte was just setting little silver pots on a damask-covered tray. She glanced up at him, not absently, because Charlotte always seemed so charged with energy that she could turn from one task and give full attention to another.
"For Mrs. Powell," she explained, setting her hands to the tray, as if she expected him to make whatever remark he would without delaying her. "She's havin' her breakfast in bed."
"Dick tells me——" he began, and she nodded.
"Yes, she's gone. Nan, you was inquirin' about, wa'n't you? It's all right. I shouldn't ask any questions, if I was you: not yet anyways. I've got a kind of an idea Dick'll be takin' the noon back to Boston. Maybe his mother, too. But there!"
This last was as if it were too much to hope for, and she lifted the tray and hurried away with it to Old Crow's room. Raven went thoughtfully back to the hall where Dick stood waiting, gnawing at his lip, and looking curiously like the Dick who had been a boy and come to Uncle Jack to have his fortunes mended as they affected kite or ball.
"Yes," said Raven, "she's gone. Don't take it that way, old man. Nan knows what's best for her."
"Walked to the station," said Dick bitterly. "Just plain cut stick and ran. Probably carried a bag. All because I made it so sickening for her she couldn't stay."
Raven thought of the things Nan had carried in the work of the last years—supplies, babies born on retreats. She had seen the fortunes of war. But there was no need of bracing Dick by telling him he could testify she hadn't any bag. If the boy could be melted into a passion of ruth over Nan, instead of a passion of resentment, so much the better for him.