Molly noticed with a kind of fierce joy that her mother’s head was now held very high and her sensitive nostrils were a-quiver. “Her nose was a-wuckin’,” as Aunt Mary put it.
“Careless of me! Kent! Sister Sarah, you are simply speaking with neither sense nor feeling. It has been your own fault that you have not obtained the love and affection of my children and so you wish to insinuate that they are careless of me. My son will let me know where he is as soon as he can. I already know he is alive and safe. You ask me how I know it! I can only say I know it.” This was said with so much fire that Aunt Clay actually seemed to shrink up. She bullied Mrs. Brown up to a certain point, but when that point reached criticism of one of her children, woe betide Aunt Clay.
Molly, whose certainty of Kent’s being alive was beginning to grow weak and dim with the weary days, felt new strength from her mother’s brave words. Edwin Green was forced to leave for the opening of Wellington, but Molly closed the bungalow and brought little Mildred over to Chatsworth, there to wait with her mother for some definite news.
Old Aunt Mary was a great comfort to them. She shared in their belief that their dear boy was alive.
“Cose nothin’ ain’t happened ter that there Kent. Didn’t he tell me he was a goin’ ter Parus ter bring home that Judy gal? The Dutch ain’t a goin’ ter do nothin’ ter a kind faceded pusson like our Kent. As fer drowndin’! Shoo! I done hear Lewis say that Kent kin outswim de whole er Jeff’son County. He kin swim to Indiany an’ back thout ever touchin’ lan’, right over yander by the water wucks whar the riber is mo’n a mile. An’ waves! Why, Lewis say whin the big stern wheelers is a jes’ churnin’ up the riber till it looks like the yawnin’ er grabes at Jedgement Day that Kent would jes’ laff at them an’ plunge right through jes’ lak a feesh. An’ I do hear tell that the waters er the mighty deep is salty an’ that makes me know that Kent ain’t goin’ ter sink. Don’t we tes’ the brine fer pickles wif a aig? An’ don’t the aig float? An’ if’n the mighty deep is called the briny deep don’t that mean it kin float a aig? What kin float a aig kin float a young man what already knows how ter swim crost an’ back on the ’Hier Riber.”
Julia Kean’s second letter came, also the one from her father in Molly’s care. Molly immediately sent it to the American Club in Paris. Judy’s letter certainly had nothing in it to reassure them as to her safety, except the meeting with the old man with whom she had danced at St. Cloud.
“It means that Judy is able to make friends wherever she goes, and as she says, she can always light on her feet, somehow,” sighed Molly. She did not add what was in her mind: “If she had only come home with Kent!”
“Mother, I must write to Judy now that I have some kind of address. Must I tell her?”
“Yes, my dear, tell her all we know, but tell her of our conviction that all is well. I will write to her myself, on second thought.”
John and Paul both spent every night at Chatsworth now, although it meant very early rising for both of them and often a midnight arrival or departure for Dr. John, whose practice was growing but seemed to be restricted to persons who persisted in being taken very ill in the night.