Strangely enough, Fox seemed to be relieved, too. At any rate, he smiled as though he were.
"Sure enough," he replied, "how can you? We might possibly manage about your mother," he added, with a glance at the doctor, "but Charlie is a problem."
Doctor Galen had nodded, in answer to that glance of Fox's. "You needn't worry about your mother, Sally," he said then. "We would take good care of her. Do you know that I have a sanitarium for just such patients? There are nurses and everything to make it convenient. And there are no bothering children—with their brothers—always underfoot." As he said that, the doctor smiled and rested his hand, for a moment, on Henrietta's shoulder. Henrietta turned and laughed up at him.
"A base libel," Fox remarked. "But all that doesn't take care of Charlie."
"Might farm him out," the doctor suggested. "What do you think of that idea, Sally?"
"I don't believe I know what you mean," she answered. "Charlie wouldn't be much good on a farm, although I suppose a farm would be a good place for him. Some farms would," she added.
"It depends on the farm, doesn't it?" said Fox. "It generally does. But don't you care what the doctor meant, Sally. He didn't mean anything, probably. We aren't going to farm Charlie out anyway. What shall I say to Martha? That's the immediate point."
Sally chuckled. "I'll write to Martha," she said, as soon as she could speak; "that is, if you'll let me. I'll thank her ever so much for offering to take me, and I'll tell her why I can't come. May I, Fox?"
"All right." Fox tossed her the letter. "And, Sally," he called softly, for she had started into the house, meaning to write her letter at once. "Sally, if Martha answers your letter, you tell me what she says."
So Sally wrote to Martha. It took her a long time and she used up several sheets of her mother's best note-paper before she got a letter written that she was satisfied to send. Miss Hazen was longer in replying, although she was not so long as she had been in replying to Fox. Sally did not care. Indeed, she did not give the matter a thought. She considered the question settled.