"No, don't you come. I don't think best."
Immediately Raven knew, if she put it in that tone (the mother tone it was) he himself didn't "think best." He joined Nan and they walked on, not speaking. Suddenly he stopped for an instant, without warning, and she too stopped and looked at him. He took off his hat and was glad of the cold air on his forehead.
"Mystery of mysteries!" he said. There was bitterness in his tone, exasperation, revolt. Evidently he saw himself in a situation he neither invited nor understood. "Who'd think of finding a woman like that on a New England doorstep talking about foddering the cows?"
Nan considered the wisely circumspect thing to say and managed tamely:
"She's a good woman."
They went on.
"Yes," said Raven, after a while, "she's a good woman. But does she want to be? Or isn't there anything inside her to make her want to be anything else?"
"I have an idea," said Nan, going carefully, "most of the men she's known have wanted her to be something else."
"Now what do you mean by that?" said Raven irritably. "And what do you know about it anyway? You're nothing but a little girl."
"You keep saying that," said Nan, with composure, "because it gives you less responsibility."