"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem to want the same thing—that is, to keep our children from marrying each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it."
"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But—" and he fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to her. She read it in the waning light.
"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?"
She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully and minutely folded sheet of note-paper.
"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound like—" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it.
"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears—when they were in his own eyes.
"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk."
"No," said Saterlee, "let's think."
IV
They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters.