Bat caught his breath.
“No!” said he, appalled. “No!”
“You think a woman couldn’t do it? Well, don’t forget that this one is tall and strong.”
Bat gestured the idea away. He, himself, had spoken of Miss Knowles and her doings suspiciously. But now that these suspicions were voiced by another, and raised to a pitch of unthought horror, he almost sickened at them.
“Why,” said he, the recollection of many little glances and accents rushing to his mind, “she might even be in love with him.”
“He is with her,” corrected the woman. “And that, you know, is different.”
She once more took up the blue stocking and began to move the needles in and out among the loops. Lena was stolidly engaged in a like manner, never having lifted her head since she began, not even when she herself had spoken.
“Neither of them has any great width between the hair line and the eyebrows,” said Bat mentally, as he looked from one to the other. “It’s the sort of calm that passes all understanding; and those persons gifted with it usually live blameless lives.”
The kitchen clock tick-tocked away in its long, wooden case, as drowsily as need be; the wooden kitchen things which were in view looked heavy and commonplace.
“But, for all they don’t seem very ready to grab a thing,” said Bat, to himself, “these women have realized something. And that’s promising. Things have happened here, and that’s the surest sign that things will continue to happen. And this pair may turn out to be of use—if I don’t expect too much of them.”