"Yes," said she. "That shows I meant to come. Go ahead, Rookie. I'll lock this door." Mid-way down the path, she glanced at him and then ventured: "You look very much set up. What is it, Rookie? what happened?"
"The thing that's happened," said Raven, with a little reminiscent laugh, "is that Tenney's afraid of his wife. And he's cut his foot and can't get away from her. I call it the most ironical of time's revenges I've ever had the pleasure of seeing."
He went on and told her the story of Tenney's disabled foot. Nan, listening, did not take it in.
"But I don't see," she offered, "why it makes him afraid of her."
"It doesn't. Though it makes it more difficult for him to get at her. The thing that's bowled him over is that she's taken him at his word. He's told her the Founder of his religion is everywhere present, and now she's accepted it and assumes the Presence is there in the kitchen, it scares him. He assumes she's dotty. Hence he's afraid of her. You see, Nan, the Presence he's in the habit of invoking is something he conceives of as belonging to strictly sacerdotal occasions. Really, it's a form of words. But she believes it and that, as I told you, scares him. It's like raising a ghost. He's raised it and somebody's seen it and he's scared."
"Can't the queerest things happen," Nan asked him, in a discursiveness he found nevertheless relevant, "here in New England? There isn't a human trait or a morbid outcrop but we've got it. See! Charlotte's at the window. S'pose she'll want me?"
"She'll love it," said Raven. He lifted up his voice and called and Charlotte left the window to appear at the door. "I've got her, Charlotte," said Raven. "She's going to make us a visit. Give us almond pudding for dinner, can't you?"
It was too late for that, Charlotte told him indulgently, but she guessed there'd be suthin'. She lingered in the hall while Nan took off her coat, and volunteered information about the fire being lighted in the west chamber.
"I 'most thought you'd come," she said, in a way softly confidential. "You can settle right down now, you two, an' visit."
She put a hand for an instant on Nan's shoulder and Nan felt the glow of her beneficence. Did Charlotte know what it was to her to have even one evening alone with Rookie? Charlotte knew most things. Probably she knew that.