ngs.

"Well, and all the while there sat Rose, taking it all in with those big
eyes of hers, smiling to herself now and then; saying things, too,
sometimes, that were pretty good, though nobody but Jim seemed to
understand, always, just what she meant. They've talked before, those
two. But she didn't mind--anything; no more embarrassed than as if we'd
been talking embroidery stitches. You don't need to worry about her. And
she absolutely seemed to like Jane Lake."

Frederica did worry. Seriously meditated running in on Rodney before she
went home to lunch and giving him a tip that a young wife in Rose's
condition wanted treating a little more carefully. It was not for
prudential reasons that she decided against doing it. She was perfectly
willing to have her head bitten off in a good cause. But she knew Rodney
down to the ground; knew that it was utterly impossible for him,
whatever his previous resolutions might be, to pull up on the brink of
anything. Once you launched a topic that interested him, he'd go through
with it. So the only thing that would do any good would be to ban the
Lakes and James Randolph completely. And Rodney, if persuaded to do
that--he would in a minute, of course, if he thought it would be good
for Rose--would be incapable of concealing from her why he had done it;
which would leave matters worse than ever.

The only outcome, then, of her visit to Eleanor and her subsequent
cogitations, was that Martin, when he came home that night, found her
unusually affectionate and inclined to be misty about the eyes. "I'm
a--lucky guy, all right"--this was her explanation,--"being married to
you. Instead of any of the others."

He was a satisfactory old dear. He took her surplus tenderness as so
much to the good, and didn't bother over not knowing what it was all
about.

Eleanor was right in her surmise that Rose had really taken a fancy to
Jane Lake. She was truly--and really humbly--grateful to Jane, in the
first place, for liking her, finding her, in Jane's own phrase, "worth
while," and her ideas worth listening to. Because here was something,
you see, that she could take at its face value. There was no
long-circuited sex attraction to discount everything, in Jane's case.
But she had another reason.

Rodney, it seemed, had told the Lakes about the prospective baby the
very morning after he'd learned the news himself, and Jane--this was
perfectly characteristic of her--had come straight up to see