Whereupon Mrs. Rutherford laughed a little again, and then quite suddenly stopped and regarded him for a moment with some thoughtfulness.
“He has some curious notions about that baby, mother,” she said afterwards. “I can see it in all he says. Everyone mightn’t understand it. I’m not sure I do myself, but he has a big, kind heart, that Tom de Willoughby, a big, kind heart.”
She understood more clearly the workings of the big, kind heart before he left them the next morning.
At night after she had put her child to sleep, she joined him on the front porch, where he sat in the moonlight, and there he spoke more fully to her.
He had seated himself upon the steps of the porch and wore a deeper reflective air, as he played with a spray of honeysuckle he had broken from its vine.
She drew up her rocking-chair and sat down near him.
“I actually believe you are thinking of that baby now,” she said, with a laugh. “You really look as if you were.”
“Well,” he admitted, “the fact is that’s just what I was doing—thinking of her.”
“Well, and what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking—” holding his spray of honeysuckle between his thumb and forefinger and looking at it in an interested way, “I was thinking about what name I should give her.”