"Not caring much about their own kids."
"Oh, Ranny, why do you 'arp on it?"
"Because I don't understand it. It's just the one thing I can't understand. What does it mean, Mother?"
"Well, my dear, sometimes it means that they can't care for anything but their 'usbands. It's 'usband, 'usband with them all the time. There's some," she elaborated, "that care most for their 'usbands, and there's some that care most for their children."
(He wondered which would Winny Dymond care for most?)
"And there's some," said Mrs. Ransome, "that care most for both, and care different, and that's best."
(Winny, he somehow fancied, would have been that sort.)
"Which did you care for most, Mother?"
"You mustn't ask me that question, Ranny. I can't answer it."
But he knew. He felt her yearning toward him even then. There was something very artful, and at the same time very comforting, about his mother. She had made him feel that Violet was all right, that he was all right, that everything, in fact, was all right; that he was, indeed, twice blest since he had a wife who loved him better than her child, and a mother who loved him better than her husband.