“I will get it to-morrow,” replied Lynn, “which is kind of me, considering that my remarks have just been alluded to as ‘unprofitable.’”
“You can’t expect everybody to think as much of what you say as you do,” suggested Iris, with a trace of sarcasm.
“Score one for you, Miss Temple. I shall now retire into my shell.” So saying, he turned to the fire, and his face became thoughtful again.
The three women looked at him from widely differing points of view. The girl, concealed in the shadow, took maidenly account of his tall, well-knit figure, his dark eyes, his sensitive mouth, and his firm, finely modelled chin. From a half-defined impulse of coquetry, she was glad of the mood which had led her to put on her most becoming gown early in the afternoon. The situation was interesting—there was a vague hint of a challenge of some kind.
Aunt Peace, so long accustomed to quiet ways, had at first felt the two an intrusion into her well-ordered home, though at the same time her hospitable instincts reproached her bitterly. He was of her blood and her line, yet in some way he seemed like an alien suddenly claiming kinship. A span of fifty years and more stretched between them, and across it, they contemplated each other, both wondering. For his part he regarded her as one might a cameo of fine workmanship or an old miniature. She was so passionless, so virginal, so far removed from all save the gentlest emotions, that he saw her only as one who stood apart.
The smile still lingered upon her lips and the firelight made shadows beneath her serene eyes. Had they asked her for her thoughts she could have phrased only one. Deep down in her heart she wondered whether anything on earth had ever been so joyously young as Lynn.
His mother, too, was watching him, as always when she thought herself unobserved. In spite of his stalwart manhood, to her he was still a child. Forgiving all things, dreaming all things, hoping all things with the boundless faith of maternity, she loved him, through the child that he was, for the man that he might be—loved him, through the man that he was, for the child that he had been.
The fire had died down, and Iris, leaning forward, laid a bit of pine upon the dull glow in the midst of the ashes. It caught quickly, and once again the magical light filled the room.
“Sing something, dear,” said Aunt Peace, drowsily, and Iris made a little murmur of dissent.