“That letter to Olaf got such a quick answer that it must have found him just back from a voyage,” she was reflecting. “And we never read what he wrote. It must have been to say that he was coming home. I suppose they kept his being here a secret even from us so that if any one asked us we would not know. There is always that Dabney Mills hanging about trying to find out things.”
The day was so full that she had little time to talk of the matter with Nancy until they sat by the fire late that evening. The blaze was always a grateful one on these nights that grew so chilly the moment the sun was gone. Aunt Anna had finally gone to bed on the new sleeping-porch, Nancy sat on one of Tim’s settles by the hearth, knitting busily, while Beatrice, openly idle and dreaming, sat opposite gazing into the changing flames. Her mind was running afar upon such various things that even now she did not come immediately to the question of Christina’s son.
“Nancy,” she said, “don’t you begin to feel like an entirely different person from the one you were when we came here?”
Her sister nodded in quick assent.
“I never knew before that I could do so—so much thinking,” she agreed rather vaguely. “I am busy every minute but there is time to turn things over in my mind, ever so many things about you and Aunt Anna and dad and myself and, oh—just about living. When I look back at last winter and all the time before, it seems as though we were always in a crowd of people, people who were all talking at once and all wanting me to do something with them in a hurry. I liked it, but I never had time to think about anything at all.”
“Yes,” returned Beatrice slowly, “there was always something to do and somewhere to go and that seemed all there was to living. Think of my head being so full of things that I forgot about having an uncle. I must have seen him and have heard dad and Aunt Anna talk of him, but I never noticed it at last when he never came any more and was never mentioned. But I think about him now. I think about him more—and more.”
Nancy laid down her knitting and leaned forward.
“Do you?” she questioned. “So do I. Do you think it could be because of him, someway, that Aunt Anna wanted to come here?”
“It may be,” said Beatrice, “but, if it is, where is he?”
They looked at each other, an unspoken question in their eyes.