On a February morning five years later, Mrs. Pendleton, who was returning from her daily trip to the market, met Susan Treadwell at the corner of Old Street.
"You are coming up to welcome Jinny, aren't you, Susan?" she asked. "The train gets in at four o'clock."
"Why, of course. I couldn't sleep a wink until I'd seen her. It has been seven years, and it seems a perfect eternity."
"She hasn't changed much—at least she hadn't six months ago when I was out there at the birth of her last baby. The little thing lived only two hours, you know, and I thought at first his death would kill her."
"It was a great blow—but she has been fortunate never to have had a day's sickness with the other three. I am dying to see them—especially the eldest. That's your namesake, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's Lucy. She's six years old now, and as good as an angel, but she hasn't fulfilled her promise of beauty. Virginia says she was the prettiest baby she ever saw."
"Everybody says that Jenny, the youngest, is a perfect beauty."
"That's why her father makes so much of her, I reckon. I told him when I was out there that he oughtn't to show such a difference between them. Do you know, Susan, I wouldn't say it to anybody else, but I don't believe Oliver has a real fondness for children. He gets tired of having them always about, and that makes him impatient. Now, Virginia is a born mother, just like her grandmother and all the women of our family."
"I should think Oliver would be crazy about the boy. He was named after his father, too."
"Virginia felt she ought to name him Henry, but we call him Harry. No, Oliver hardly ever takes any notice of him. I don't mean, of course, that he isn't nice and kind to them—but he isn't wrapped up in them heart and soul as Virginia is. I really believe he is more absorbed in this play he has written than he is in the children."