"Well"—the thin old hand was guiding the pen over the newspaper, tracing lines in and out among the lines of print—"I want to put it so they'll understand what we do—and the people we see—and—and all that sort of thing."
"Surely it's easy to say that," said Moira, with a half smile. "But how will it interest them?"
"They've got to be interested," replied the old woman sharply as she looked up. "Anything you've put into their heads has got to be taken out again; they've got to understand that we're doing things rather well—going about—and that sort of thing."
Moira dropped her hands, and looked across at Patience with sudden interest. "But why?" she asked.
"Because I choose," said Patience stiffly. "Because I'm going to have 'em think different from what you've told 'em. Because I want 'em to know that we hold up our heads with the best of 'em. That's why. If I was younger, and hadn't forgot so many things, I could be able to write down just what I want. But my imagination seems to have got dead somehow."
"Are you going to put imagination in the letter?" asked the girl.
"What else is there to put?" Patience raised her head and looked at the girl; then lowered her eyes, and went on tracing the lines on the newspaper. "Oh, yes, I know; I understand more than you think. I'm a hard old woman—and you're a girl, with all the world calling to you. You hear the beat of hundreds of feet all marching on the road you'd like to travel; don't you hear the beat of the feet sometimes?"
"Sometimes," replied Moira, lowering her eyes.
"I know you do. And I'm glad to forget that the feet are marching at all; glad to think that if they march my way, it'll only be perhaps over my grave. I've done with it, and I've thought sometimes that you could be done with it, too."
Moira stretched a hand across the table, and touched the hand of the woman. "I'm not ungrateful—and we lead our quiet lives here," she said.