If she noticed his confusion she did not appear to do so. Her heart had been touched by all she had heard from her son of the lonely boy, and she had also been interested in accounts of his gifts that had come to her from various sources. The beauty, the poetry, the pensiveness of his face moved her deeply—knowing his history and divining the lack of sympathy one of his bent would probably find in the Allan home, for all its indulgences.
She sat on a garden-bench and talked to him for a time, in her gentle, understanding way, and then, not wishing to be a restraint upon the boys, (after placing her husband's fine library at Edgar's disposal, and urging him to come often to see Rob) withdrew into the house.
The motherless boy looked after her until she had disappeared, and stared at the door that had closed upon her until he was recalled from his reverie by the voice of his friend, suggesting that they now see the rabbits. Edgar looked at the gentle creatures with unseeing eyes, though he appeared to be listening to the prattle of his companion concerning them. Suddenly, in a voice filled with enthusiasm and with a touch of awe in it, he said:
"Rob, your mother is divinely beautiful—and good."
"Bully," was the nonchalant reply. "The best thing about her is the way she takes up for a fellow when he brings in a bad report or gets into a scrape. Fathers always think it's their sons' fault, you know."
Edgar flushed. "Bully—" he said to himself, with a shudder. The adjective applied to her seemed blasphemy.
Aloud, he said, "She's an angel! She's the one I've always dreamed about."
"You dreamed about mother when you had never seen her?" questioned the astonished Rob. "What did you dream?"
"Nothing, in the way you mean. I meant she is like my idea of a perfect woman. The kind of woman a man could always be good for, or would gladly die to serve."
"Well, I'm not smart enough to think out things like that, Eddie, but Mother certainly is all right. What you say about her sounds nice, and she'd understand it, too. I just bet that you and mother'll be the best sort of cronies when you know each other better. She likes all those queer old books you think so fine, and she knows whole pages of poetry by heart. When you and she get together it will be like two books talking out loud to each other. I won't be able to join in much, but it will be as good as a play to listen."