She, sitting on a stool at his side (and looking, poor woman! old enough to be his mother), was radiant.
"And you don't enjoy talking to Lily?" she said—just for the happiness of hearing, again, his horrified protest, "I should say not! There's nothing she can talk about."
"She doesn't know about books and things? She hasn't—brains?"
"Brains? She probably never read anything in her life! She has lots of sense, but no intellect. She hasn't an idea beyond food and flowers—and Jacky."
"I wish I had her idea about food," Eleanor said, simply.
It was her fairness toward Lily that amazed him; it made him reproach himself for his stupidity in not having confessed to her long ago! "Why was I such a fool, Eleanor, as not to know that you were a big woman? Mrs. Houghton knew it. Why, even Edith knew it! She told me you'd forgive anything."
"What!" She rose abruptly and stood looking at him with suddenly angry eyes. "Does Edith know?" she said.
"No! Of course she doesn't know—this! But one day she and I were taking a walk, and I was thinking what a devilish mess I was in.... And I suppose Edith saw I was down by the head, and she got to talking about you—"
"You let her talk about me!"
"She was saying how perfectly fine you had been about the mountain—"