He helped her over that abyss. "It's a most improper name for wisdom."
"This isn't wisdom. Wisdom is just going on—and—keeping the world clean."
"Then," he said slowly, "you may count among the sages."
They stood together by the schoolroom window and watched the windy sunshine darting among the laurel bushes and brightening the brass on the harness of the patient horse outside the gate.
"I wonder," Helen said, speaking as if she were not quite awake, "whether Mr. Pinderwell ever read philosophy."
"No," Zebedee answered in the same tones; "he took to wood-carving."
This time she leapt the abyss unaided and with a laugh.
"But then, he never had a stepmother nodding beside the fire. What is going to happen to her?"
"She has very little strength."
"But she isn't going to die?"