The man stared out into the sunny world outside the windows and all unashamed let the tears fill his fine eyes.
The boy, seeing those tears, all at once remembered now many times, when he was an unheeding youngster, he had seen this same father sitting at the departed mother's desk with his head pillowed in his arms.
"Dad," the boy's awed voice questioned, "is love a thing as big and terrible and lasting as that?"
The man wiped his eyes and smiled.
"Yes, Son, love is as wonderful and lasting and in a way as terrible as that. It was wrong of me to tease Nanny. But I have been worried about my motherless girl. I'd like to see her happily settled. Somehow I've never worried about you."
"No," and the boy smiled an odd little smile that showed just how he had missed a mother's petting, "it's always mothers that worry about the boys, isn't it?"
At this second revelation and blunder Mr. Ainslee was so startled that he forgot to go in search of Nanny.
As a matter of fact Nanny had left the house. She wanted to go to the knoll and think over carefully certain matters that had been puzzling her of late. But she dared not go to the grove on the hilltop. For only half an hour before she had seen Green Valley's young minister walking up to her old seat under the oaks. Perhaps if her father had not said what he did—Nanny frowned impatiently, then sighed and walked down the road to Grandma Wentworth's. She told herself that she was going down to visit Grandma and tell her the week's news. But she was really going to find heartease and because at Grandma's she would hear oftenest the name that now had the power to quicken her heart beats and bring her a pain that was strangely edged with joy.
Grandma was weeding her seed onions and very sensibly let Nanny help. Nanny's fingers flew in and out and because she dared not tell her own heart troubles she told Grandma about Jocelyn and David and the foolish bit of gossip that had come between them.
"I think, Grandma, somebody ought to do something about it. Can't you—"