“You have not seen her face since there was a baby. Perhaps she understands you, too, now. Perhaps she understands, now, what it costs, to give up an only child to anyone.”
“That’s it, of course, that’s what finished me up, her getting Dan, the way she has. I guess I seem pretty mean to you, but Dan was all I had.”
“I think I understand,” the Bishop said quietly.
Arrested by his tone she turned, “Was he good, your daughter’s husband? Did you get on with him?”
“No one is good enough for an only child. Yes, he was good. He—he has been remarried for a long time, you know.” He spoke with long pauses, remembering, “Yes, I got on with him. I should have lost my daughter if I hadn’t. We had one happy year, together. Getting on is hard. But not getting on is harder.”
She did not speak, turned from him again toward the window, intent, musing.
“Isn’t it,” he pleaded, “harder?”
“You didn’t have to,” she spoke chokily, “get on with Florence! Maybe you could, though, you, Bishop. But I couldn’t! You couldn’t maybe understand how I can’t forgive her for all that she’s taken from me,—a man couldn’t maybe understand, even you. It’s the mother working in me. They used to laugh at me over home, and say I mothered all the village. Yet now I can’t get at Dan, nor at the baby. I haven’t anyone to mother, and it seems as if it makes me sort of,” she struck away a tear with an awkward gesture, “sort of smothery!”
His eyes bent on her in sharp intentness, “There is someone for you to mother!” he said.
“Who?”