The day was so full that she had little time to talk of the matter with Nancy until they sat by the fire late that evening. The blaze was always a grateful one on these nights that grew so chilly the moment the sun was gone. Aunt Anna had finally gone to bed on the new sleeping-porch, Nancy sat on one of Tim’s settles by the hearth, knitting busily, while Beatrice, openly idle and dreaming, sat opposite gazing into the changing flames. Her mind was running afar upon such various things that even now she did not come immediately to the question of Christina’s son.
“Nancy,” she said, “don’t you begin to feel like an entirely different person from the one you were when we came here?”
“I never knew before that I could do so—so much _thinking_,” she agreed rather vaguely. “I am busy every minute but there is time to turn things over in my mind, ever so many things about you and Aunt Anna and dad and myself and, oh—just about living. When I look back at last winter and all the time before, it seems as though we were always in a crowd of people, people who were all talking at once and all wanting me to do something with them in a hurry. I liked it, but I never had time to think about anything at all.”
“Yes,” returned Beatrice slowly, “there was always something to do and somewhere to go and that seemed all there was to living. Think of my head being so full of things that I forgot about having an uncle. I must have seen him and have heard dad and Aunt Anna talk of him, but I never noticed it at last when he never came any more and was never mentioned. But I think about him now. I think about him more—and more.”
Nancy laid down her knitting and leaned forward.
“Do you?” she questioned. “So do I. Do you think it could be because of him, someway, that Aunt Anna wanted to come here?”
“It may be,” said Beatrice, “but, if it is, where is he?”
They looked at each other, an unspoken question in their eyes.
“There is another thing,” pursued Beatrice. “That boy who has been helping Tim is Christina’s son Olaf. I had thought so before but to-day I am certain.”
“I had been suspecting that too,” said Nancy. “One day I asked her if she didn’t want us to write her another letter, and she laughed, so happily, and said, ‘Not just yet.’”