"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell him what to do.
"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.
"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big enough to know.'
"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost old—as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through a child.
"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some arrangements—if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the word was spelt different and stiffer—and we was setting there in that sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their thick, strange ring, and his dark, kind of even face was like some fancy picture of a knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well, or better.
"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've been frantic with anxiety.'
"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious.... 'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'
He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she told him was hers. I got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.
"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to drink'd go good—with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'