"Can you tell us about her?" Helen asked.
"I don't know that I can."
"You oughtn't to have suggested it," Miriam said in a reproof which was ready to turn to mockery at a hint from Zebedee.
"He won't tell us if he doesn't want to. You wouldn't be hurt by anything we said, would you?"
"Of course not. The difficulty is that there seems nothing to tell. She was so quiet, as I remember her, and so meek, and yet one felt quite safe with her. I don't think she was afraid, as I was, but there was something, something that made things uncertain. I can't explain."
"I expect she was too gentle at the beginning," Helen said. "She let him have his own way and then she was never able to catch up, and all the time—all the time she was thinking perhaps you were going to suffer because she had made that mistake. And that would make her so anxious not to make another, wouldn't it? And so—"
"And so it would go on. But how did you discover that?"
"Oh, I know some things," she said, and ended feebly, "about some things."
"She died when I was thirteen and Daniel three, and my father was very unhappy."
"I didn't like your father a bit," Miriam said.