The Duchess laughed shortly.
"That is possible, too," she agreed. "You said Cousin Joe was well—and Edith?"
"Oh, yes, they're well—I mean, they're very well indeed, thank you," said Caroline. "Uncle Joe says they have to be, with the General's shoes two dollars and a half a pair! You see he has quite thick soles, now—he runs about everywhere. Aunt Edith says he needs a mounted policeman 'stead of a nurse."
"Did Edith get rested after the moving?"
"Oh, yes," Caroline answered absently. She was watching the opal globes sway. "Aunt Edith says before she was married she'd have gone South with a trained nurse after such an experience, but now she has to save the nurse for measles, she s'poses, so she just lies down after lunch."
The Duchess moved restlessly half out of the griffin chair, but sank back again.
"And you have a trained nurse all the time," Caroline mused, stroking the glistering velvet, "isn't that funny? Just so in case you might be sick...." The sunlight peeped and winked on the gold book-edges.
"It amounts to that," the Duchess said, adding very low, "but she is not likely to be needed for measles."
"No," Caroline assented, "you and cousin Richard are pretty old for measles. It's children that have 'em, mostly. I never did, yet. But you don't seem to ever have any children. And such a big house, too! And you're very fond of children, aren't you? It seems so queer that when you like them you can't manage to have any. And people that don't care about them have them all the time. It was only Christmas time that Norah Mahoney—she does the extra washing in the summer—had another. That makes seven. It's a boy. Joseph Michael, he's named, partly after Uncle Joe. Norah says there don't seem to be any end to your troubles, once you're married to a man."
The Duchess turned aside her head, but Caroline knew from the corner of her mouth that her eyes were full of tears. She stroked the hands that clenched the griffin's crest.