Eleanor shook her head. "We don't know that, Rose. And as long as Grace stays with him and says nothing, we can't know it. She is keeping that fact from being knowledge—if it is fact. Don't you see that she just has to hold on to that vague 'if'?"
"But she cannot possibly love the man, Eleanor!"
Eleanor looked at her curiously, and for some hidden reason which she could not define Rosamund's heart, under that long look, began to beat faster.
"Ah, Rosamund, which of us can understand love?" Eleanor asked. After a pause she added, "I have wondered sometimes whether they really and truly love—the people who question 'why'!"
Rosamund was beginning to be afraid of the turn the conversation was taking. "Oh, Eleanor!" she exclaimed, somewhat impatiently, "your subtleties are beyond me!"
While they talked, Tim had been tramping back and forth on the front veranda of the house, himself the horse of a little iron wagon that was one of his new toys. He was seldom willing that Eleanor should waste time in uninteresting conversation with grown-ups. He had taken her for his own; and Rosamund, Yetta, Mother Cary—everyone who had ministered to him before—were all but forgotten. Eleanor must now do everything for him; nothing less than complete possession could satisfy his hungry little heart. And Eleanor's hunger for Tim went beyond his for her; as she talked, her eyes followed him, her look brooding upon him as if he were new-born and her own.
At Rosamund's last exclamation she laughed, and bending towards Timmy on one of his turnings, gathered him into her arms, in spite of his indignantly protesting squirms and thrusts.
"My subtleties, indeed!" she said, while burrowing for kisses under the curls on his neck. "I'm the most elemental creature alive! I'm nothing more than a mother hen!"
"Matt chopped ve chicken's head off wif a ax," said Tim, "an' it hopped an' hopped an' hopped. An' Sue took all its fevvers off. But chickens don't catch cold. An' anyway its head was gone."
"Mercy!" said Rosamund. "Matt ought not to have let the child see that! And I do wish he wouldn't be so—so explicit!"