"Must it?"
"How else?"
She shuddered. "Will he bring the harmonium? What will the children say?"
"They will suffer more without him."
"But will they?" She had flown past him, beyond their bodily needs, and she saw their eager spirits starving. "He will spoil things. There will be no freedom. Grace will be sensible and she tolerates her uncle, but Theresa hates him. She is so violent, Ned."
"And so good."
"Yes, somewhere she is good. I dare not tell her."
"I trust her. Treat her as a woman, and she behaves as one."
Nancy smiled. "Try it, my dear."
The flinging open of the door prefaced Theresa's return. Her face looked very thin in its whiteness. "I've just remembered," she said, squeezing her hands together—"I've just remembered you won't go to the mountains any more. It doesn't matter about being poor, but I don't know how we're to do without the mountains. What shall we do? And there's Alexander, and Mrs. Rutherford, and Janet—they feel gone. I don't know what to do. Mother, what are we to do?"