She nodded. "And no formal callers to interrupt, and no ridiculous competitions with Mrs. Websters—I think people are more themselves in the country, somehow. Kentucky people, at any rate. Your Kentuckian does not run quite true to type herded in masses."
"Hear the wise authorine!" beamed Archie.
"Perhaps that is true of all Anglo-Saxons," she went on, unheeding. "They need to get their roots into the soil."
"Not only of Anglo-Saxons, Joan—of Semitic people, of all people, I think," said Nikolai. "Humanity began in a garden, if we may believe our myths. And with all races the dream of the ultimate Paradise is a garden."
"Why don't you put some roots out yourself?" asked Archie, eagerly. "There's a lot of good land about here for sale cheap. Why don't you buy some and settle down near us?"
"Oh, do!" urged Joan. "What a splendid idea!"
He looked from one to the other, the slight flush that had risen to his face dying away.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "Thank you, my friends. Perhaps—some day."
Joan remembered that he had spoken once of his intention to settle down near her and grow up with her children, "when he was old enough."
Surely, she thought (quite unaware of any cruelty in her thought) he was old enough now!