hen she was interested and
even delighted (not at all shocked or startled) at having father's
secret broken to her.

"It's more natural," she said, "that he should take an interest in the
Hands. More like he used to be. I often wondered---"

Another sentence which she did not need to finish!

For a while Petro's whole soul was so steeped in the joy of mother's
sympathy, and in plans for the future, that he forgot the faint
uneasiness which had stirred within him at father's message about the
milk. Something had seemed to whisper: "It's only an excuse." And his
asking not to be disturbed all the afternoon, "can it mean that he's
got a special reason for wanting to be let alone hour after hour?"

But Petro and mother had been deep in conversation before the whisper
came. In the very midst of it she had asked a beautifully
understanding question about Win, and in answering Petro forgot
everything else for a time.

They talked intimately in the big, unfriendly, imitation Elizabethan
dining-room which for once they had to themselves And then they
continued their talk still more intimately in the "den." It was only
the grandfather clock striking four that reminded Petro of his
uneasiness and of the whisper.

Why it did remind him he could hardly have explained, except that the
clock had a very curious individuality for him. It had belonged to his
great grandmother and had come down through her to his mother. Even as
a little boy he had felt that it was _more_ than a clock: it was an
old friend who had ticked through the years, keeping time with the
heart-beats of those for whom it told the passing moments of life and
death. Often he had imagined that with its ticking it gave good
advice, if only one could understand. Now, when it struck four, it
seemed to Petro that it did so in a dry, peremptory manner intended to
be arresting, to remind him of something important that he was in
danger of forgetting.

This pause in his thoughts left room for the whisper to come again.
It came, adding to its first suggestion: "Don't you know that while
you and mother were lingering so happily over your lunch, father stole
away and went off to make mischief between you and the girl?"

Petro sprang up. He was ashamed to harbour such a thought of
treachery, but it was there. He could easily learn whether father had
gone to New York by inquiring if one of the motors had been taken out.
But it was hardly worth while to ask questions. Pet