children, because one child is always so lonely.
I know because I was an only child."

This astounding piece of confidence kept Nan's tongue tied and for a
few seconds all manner of funny emotions fought within her. She wanted
to laugh, to get angry at the lordly superiority of the idea that a
woman must hurry to the altar. She felt that she ought to feel
embarrassed but the innocent sincerity with which it was all uttered
kept her from blushing and her eyes from snapping. She told herself
instead that of all man creatures she had ever encountered, this boy
from India was certainly the weirdest. And she wondered what a woman
not his mother could do with him.

After a while she tried again.

"Don't you feel rather guilty loafing here in the sunshine?"

"No. Why--what should I be doing?"

"These beautiful afternoons you ought to be devoting to pastoral calls."

"But I attended to all the day's work this morning. I helped Uncle
Roger Allan build a fence and doctored up David's pet horse, Dolly. I
spaded up a flower plot for Grandma Wentworth and visited little Jimmy
Trumbull who's home from the hospital. Doc Philipps says he won't be
up for some time yet, so to cheer him up I've promised him a party. I
also drove to the station with Mrs. Bates' ancient horse and brought
home her new incubator. While I was there Jocelyn Brownlee came down
to get a box she said she had there. Some teasing cousin sent her a
little live pig and when she found out what was in the box she didn't
know what to do. So I put the pig beside the incubator and sat Jocelyn
beside me and we proceeded on our way.

"That horse belonging to Mrs. Bates is certainly a solemn, stately
beast but Jocelyn's little pig was anything but stately. We made an
interesting and a musical spectacle as we went along, and I know that
one little red-headed boy in this town was late for school because he
followed us halfway home. We passed the Tomlins place and Hen was
sitting at the window, propped up with pillows. It was his first day
up and we made him laugh so hard that his wife was a little worried, I
think."

"Agnes is rather good to Hen these days, isn't she?" Nan ventured to
ask, for the whole town knew how Agnes had gone to the minister with
her domestic troubles and how in some mysterious fashion this young man
had worked a miracle. For both Agnes and Hen were as suddenly and
happily in love with one another as though they were newly marrie