t at her.
The thing that's bowled him over is that she's taken him at his word.
He's told her the Founder of his religion is everywhere present, and now
she's accepted it and assumes the Presence is there in the kitchen, it
scares him. He assumes she's dotty. Hence he's afraid of her. You see,
Nan, the Presence he's in the habit of invoking is something he
conceives of as belonging to strictly sacerdotal occasions. Really, it's
a form of words. But she believes it and that, as I told you, scares
him. It's like raising a ghost. He's raised it and somebody's seen it
and he's scared."

"Can't the queerest things happen," Nan asked him, in a discursiveness
he found nevertheless relevant, "here in New England? There isn't a
human trait or a morbid outcrop but we've got it. See! Charlotte's at
the window. S'pose she'll want me?"

"She'll love it," said Raven. He lifted up his voice and called and
Charlotte left the window to appear at the door. "I've got her,
Charlotte," said Raven. "She's going to make us a visit. Give us almond
pudding for dinner, can't you?"

It was too late for that, Charlotte told him indulgently, but she
guessed there'd be suthin'. She lingered in the hall while Nan took off
her coat, and volunteered information about the fire being lighted in
the west chamber.

"I 'most thought you'd come," she said, in a way softly confidential.
"You can settle right down now, you two, an' visit."

She put a hand for an instant on Nan's shoulder and Nan felt the glow of
her beneficence. Did Charlotte know what it was to her to have even one
evening alone with Rookie? Charlotte knew most things. Probably she knew
that.

Nan and Raven had their noon dinner and went for a walk, up the road.
That led them past Tenney's and when they reached the house Raven said:

"You wait a jiff and I'll ask how he is."

Tira came, in answer to his knock. She was gravely calm, not even
disturbed in her secret mind, Raven concluded, not keyed up by inner
apprehension, and keeping herself firm. Where, he wondered absently, at
the same instant, did she get those clothes, blue, always worn to the
exact point of soft loveliness, the very moral of her eyes? She glanced
down the path at Nan, and Nan waved to her. Tira gave a serious little
bow and turned her glance to Raven, who inquired:

"How's his foot?"

"It pains him a good deal," she said, with that softness he had noted in
her voice while they dressed the hurt. "He has to se