"Harry," said Colonel Musgrave then, "an enormous whale is coming down the river in precisely two minutes. Perhaps if you were to look through the palings of that fence you might see him. I don't suppose you would care to, though?"
And Harry strolled resignedly toward the fence. Harry Pendomer did not like this funny lady who had hurt, frightened eyes. He did not believe in the whale, of course, any more than he did in Santa Claus. But like most children, he patiently accepted the fact that grown people are unaccountable overlords appointed by some vast bêtise, whom, if only through prudential motives, it is preferable to humor.
V
Colonel Musgrave stood now upon the other side of John Charteris's grave—just in the spot that was reserved for her own occupancy some day.
"You are ill, Anne. You are not fit to be out. Go home."
"I had a little boy once," she said. "'But that's all past and gone, and good times and bad times and all times pass over.' There's an odd simple music in the sentence, isn't there? Yet I remember it chiefly because I used to read that book to him and he loved it. And it was my child that died. Why is this other child so like him?"
"Oh, then, that's it, is it?" said Rudolph Musgrave, as in relief. "Bless me, I suppose all these little shavers are pretty much alike. I can only tell Roger from the other boys by his red head. Humanity in the raw, you know. Still, it is no wonder it gave you a turn. You had much better go home, however, and not take any foolish risks, and put your feet in hot water, and rub cologne on your temples, and do all the other suitable things——"
"I remember now," she continued, without any apparent emotion, and as though he had not spoken. "When I came into the room you were saying that the child must be considered. You were both very angry, and I was alarmed—foolishly alarmed, perhaps. And my—and John Charteris said, 'Let him tell, then'—and you told me—"
"The truth, Anne."
"And he sat quietly by. Oh, if he'd had the grace, the common manliness—!" She shivered here. "But he never interrupted you. I—I was not looking at him. I was thinking how vile you were. And when you had ended, he said, 'My dear, I am sorry you should have been involved in this. But since you are, I think we can assure Rudolph that both of us will regard his confidence as sacred.' Then I remembered him, and thought how noble he was! And all those years that were so happy, hour by hour, he was letting you—meet his bills!" She seemed to wrench out the inadequate metaphor.