“I didn't know you'd come back,” she said. She returned to the rocking-chair, from which she came forward to greet him, and he dropped into an easy seat near the table piled with books and sewing.
“I didn't know it myself half an hour ago.”
“Really? And is this your first visit? I must be a very interesting case.”
“You are—always. How have you been?”
“I? I hardly know whether I've been at all,” she answered, in mechanical parody of his own reply. “So many other things have been of so much more importance.”
She let her eyes rest full upon his, with a sense of returning comfort and safety in his presence, and after a deep breath of satisfaction, she asked, “How did you leave your mother?”
“Very much better—entirely out of danger.”
“It's so odd to think of any one's having a family. To me it seems the normal condition not to have any relatives.”
“Well, we can't very well dispense with mothers,” said the doctor. “We have to begin with them, at any rate.”
“Oh, I don't object to them. I only wonder at them.”