She laughed her ringing little laugh: “I told you of your father's and my love affair. Why, I was engaged to three other men at the same time—positively I was. And I would have been just as happy with any of them.”
“Why did you marry father, then?”
Her mother laughed and tapped the toe of her shoe playfully against the fender: “It was a silly reason; he swam the Tennessee River on his horse to see me one day, when the ferry-boat was a wreck. I married him.”
“Would not the others have done as well?”
“Yes, but I knew your father was brave. You cannot love a coward—no woman can. But let a man be brave—no matter what his faults are—the rest is all a question of time. You would soon learn to love him as I did your father.”
Mrs. Westmore was wise. She changed the subject.
“Have you noticed Uncle Bisco lately, mother?” asked Alice after a while.
“Why, yes; I intended to ask you about him.”
“He says there are threats against his life—his and Aunt Charity's. He had a terrible dream last night, and he would have me to interpret it.”
“Quite Biblical,” laughed her mother. “What was it?”