“Florence!”
“Florence!” her voice hissed.
“Yes!”
Her trembling lips turned hard, “I guess I’d have to forgive her first!”
“Couldn’t you?” he questioned, while the blue eyes grew softly a-shine. “Couldn’t you, to-day? Couldn’t you, for instance, go out to them to spend Christmas, to-day?” His plan, long suppressed, came hurrying forth. “It’s so near, and so easy! Only thirty miles to that baby! The train leaves at ten, you have time. There’s another train back at seven-two. And you needn’t mind about me. I shall be out all day, first a visit I must make, then the service, and afterward I dine with Mrs. Hollister. You are quite free, you see, to go!”
“I’m free enough, yes,” she admitted, “but I haven’t the will to go, that’s all.”
“To the baby?”
“To Florence! It would mean making up with Florence!”
Lips and eyes showed a quick pleading smile as he said, “Isn’t that perhaps what Christmas and babies are for, for making up?”
She was silent, her breast in its tightly hooked black rose and fell. “But people!” she broke forth at length. “Everybody knowing! The village knows I was turned out, and that there’s not been a word between us for three years. I can’t go crawling back now, just because there’s a baby come,—everybody looking on, everybody knowing!”