lippant inward comment, thought the boy
looked as if he'd been saying his prayers.

"She's gone, Jack," said Dick.

In stress of intimacy, he often dropped the prefatory title.

"Gone?" Raven's mind flew to Tira. "Where?"

"Back to Boston. Walked to the station. Took the milk train. Charlotte
says she simply walked out and said she wasn't coming back."

"Your mother or--you don't mean Nan?"

"Nan, yes. Do you see mother walking five miles to a train?" But if Dick
was unsettled, this was not his surly mood of the night before. "If I
drove her away"--he began, and then ended with an appealingness to be
remembered of the Dick who had not been nettled by life, "Jack, I wish
she wouldn't."

"I'll ask Charlotte," said Raven. "Your mother out yet? No? Well, don't
bring her into it."

He went off to the kitchen where Charlotte was just setting little
silver pots on a damask-covered tray. She glanced up at him, not
absently, because Charlotte always seemed so charged with energy that
she could turn from one task and give full attention to another.

"For Mrs. Powell," she explained, setting her hands to the tray, as if
she expected him to make whatever remark he would without delaying her.
"She's havin' her breakfast in bed."

"Dick tells me----" he began, and she nodded.

"Yes, she's gone. Nan, you was inquirin' about, wa'n't you? It's all
right. I shouldn't ask any questions, if I was you: not yet anyways.
I've got a kind of an idea Dick'll be takin' the noon back to Boston.
Maybe his mother, too. But there!"

This last was as if it were too much to hope for, and she lifted the
tray and hurried away with it to Old Crow's room. Raven went
thoughtfully back to the hall where Dick stood waiting, gnawing at his
lip, and looking curiously like the Dick who had been a boy and come to
Uncle Jack to have his fortunes mended as they affected kite or ball.

"Yes," said Raven, "she's gone. Don't take it that way, old man. Nan
knows what's best for her."

"Walked to the station," said Dick bitterly. "Just plain cut stick and
ran. Probably carried a bag. All because I made it so sickening for her
she couldn't stay."

Raven thought of the things Nan had carried in the work of the last
years--supplies, babies born on retreats. She had seen the fortunes of
war. But there was no need of bracing Dick by telling him he could
testify she hadn't any bag. If the boy could be melted into a passion of
ruth over Nan, instead of a pas