"Complains of headache."
"Headache? That is very unlike Mrs. Meadows. I always look upon her as a bundle of steel springs. Perhaps something is wrong with the baby."
"Maybe," replied the bishop. "She seems to dote on it."
Then that last visit to his cousin suddenly recurred to him; he remembered her conversation—he thought of the lonely woman up thee. Strange! Somehow or other, she had been at the back of his mind all the time. He decided to call again in a day or two.
Keith said:
"I should not like to come between her and the child. That woman is a tiger—mother…. Heard, there has been something in your mind all day long. What is it?"
"I believe there has. I'll try to explain. You know those Japanese flowers—" he began, and then broke off.
"I am glad you are becoming terrestrial at last. Nothing like Mother Earth! You cannot think how much money I wasted on Japanese plants, especially bulbs, before I convinced myself that they cannot be grown on this soil."
"Those paper flowers, I mean, which we used to put in our finger-bowls at country dinner tables. They look like shrivelled specks of cardboard. But in the water they begin to grow larger and to unfold themselves into unexpected patterns of flowers of all colours. That is how I feel—expanding, and taking on other tints. New problems, new influences, are at work upon me. It is as if I needed altogether fresh standards. Sometimes I feel almost ashamed—"
"Ashamed? My dear Heard, this will never do. You must take a blue pill when we get home."