"Mother wouldn't turn away a dog," said Alexander simply.
Clara Rutherford, entering the room with her swift, firm step, felt her visitor's pulse, laid her hand on his forehead, looked searchingly into his eyes, and said he might get up.
"The stairs are just in front of you," she told him, "and the kitchen's at their foot. You'll find us there when you're ready."
When he went downstairs, he saw that rain was slanting across the open doorway leading to the yard, where it fell with a splatter on the paving-stones. He caught a glimpse of a copse of larch-trees on the hillside and heard the crying of their blown branches. Against the door-post, with a cold pipe in his mouth, Rutherford was lounging, and his wife sat on the fender with the light of the fire brightening her hair. Edward Webb stood for an instant before they saw him, and made him welcome.
"Why, the stairs didn't creak!" said Clara. "That was what I was listening for. You can never miss that board when you want to. When I go late to bed and creep upstairs I always tread on it, and then I hear Alexander turning in his bed. He wakes if a mouse cheeps. Tea's ready."
She went to the door and whistled, and presently Alexander came through the rain.
"Where've you been?" his father demanded.
"In the barn." He looked at Edward Webb, who ate his bread-and-butter without so much as an upward glance.
"I can't think what you want to go there for, when we've chairs to sit on."
"Janet gave me a truss of hay, and it's softer than a bed."