She was standing on the hearth rug in her walking gown, slowly fastening her gloves. Sally looked at her and laughed in her nervous way.
"Well, I confess that it did cross my mind," she admitted. "Tom, like all men, believed Mrs. Webb to be a martyr until I convinced him that she martyred others."
"Oh, he still believes it behind your back," said Nicholas.
Juliet turned upon him frankly. "It's a shame to destroy wifely confidence," she protested. "Sally hasn't been married long enough to know that the only way to convince a husband is to argue against oneself."
Her head rested upon the cushions of her chair, and her pretty foot was on the brass fender. There was a cordial warmth about her which turned the simple room into home for even the casual caller. The matronly grace of her movements evoked the memory of infancy and motherhood; to Nicholas Burr she seemed, in her beauty and her abundance, the supreme expression of a type—of the joyous racial mother of all men.
Her youngest child, a girl of three, that she called "baby," had come in from a walk and was standing at her knee in white cap and cloak and mittens, her hand clutching Juliet's dress, her solemn eyes on the governor. He had tried to induce her to approach, but she held off and regarded him without a smile.
"Now, now, baby," pleaded Juliet, "who fed the bunnies with you the other day?"
"Man," responded the baby gravely.
"Who gave you nice nuts for the dear bunnies?"
"Man."