Mary-Clare crouched down before the red blazing logs; her coat and hat fell from her and she stretched her hands out to the heat with a little shiver of luxurious content.
Aunt Polly knew the girl’s mood and left her to herself. She had come to tell something but must tell it in her own way. To question, to intrude a thought, would only tend to confuse and distract her, so Polly took up her knitting and nodded cheerfully. She had a feeling that all along she had been waiting for Mary-Clare.
“I suppose big things like being born and dying are very simple when they come. It is the mistaking the big and little things that makes us all so uncertain. Aunt Polly, Larry has left me.” The start had been made!
“Yes; Peneluna told us. He hasn’t gone far.” Aunt Polly knitted on while Mary-Clare gave a little laugh.
“Oh! dearie, he was far, far away before he started for the Point. Land doesn’t count––it’s more than that, only I did not know. Isn’t it queer, Aunt Polly, now that I understand things, I find that marrying Larry and having the babies haven’t touched me at all––I never belonged to them or they to me––except Noreen. And it’s queer about Noreen, too, she will never seem part of all that.”
Mary-Clare, her eyes fixed on the fire, was thinking aloud; her breath came short and quick as if she had been running.
“My dear child!” Aunt Polly was shocked in spite of herself. “No woman can shake off her responsibilities in that way. Larry is your husband and you have been a mother.”
“You are talking words, Aunt Polly, not things.” Aunt Polly knew that she was and it made her wince.
“That’s the trouble with us all, Aunt Polly. Saying words over and over and calling them things––as if you could take God in!”
There was no bitterness in the tones, but there was the weary impatience of a child that had been too often denied the truth.