"I don't see how anyone can be more of one, nowadays, Roger. She heals people and she says prayers, and she is always good and gentle and never thinks of herself. I'm sure I can't think what you want more."
A touch of plaintiveness and even of protest had come into Mrs. Chadwick's voice.
"Perhaps what I want is less," he laughed. "Perhaps she's too much of a saint for my taste. I think she's a little too much of one for your taste, really--if you were to be quite candid with yourself. Has she spoken to you at all about Barney? Are you quite sure you'll have to reckon with her for yourself and the children?"
At this Mrs. Chadwick showed a frank alarm. "Oh, quite, quite sure!" she said. "She couldn't be so lovely to us all if she didn't mean to take him! Why do you ask, Roger? You haven't any reason for thinking she won't?"
"None whatever. Quite the contrary." He didn't want to put poor Mrs. Chadwick to the cruel test of declaring whether she would rather have the children go to church and lose Miss Toner and all her money or have them stay away and keep Miss Toner. After all such a test was not to be asked of her. Miss Toner wanted people to follow their own light. "I only wondered if she talked to you about him. Asked any girlish leading questions."
"None, none whatever," said Mrs. Chadwick. "But I feel that's because she thinks she knows him far better than I do and that he's told her everything already. It's rather hard to be a mother, Roger. For of course, though she is so much better and cleverer than I am, I feel sure that no one understands Barney as I do."
"She'd be a little cleverer still if she could see that, wouldn't she?"
"Well, I don't know. Girls never do. I was just the same when I was engaged to Francis. Even now I can't think that old Mrs. Chadwick really understood him as I did. It's very puzzling, isn't it? Very difficult to see things from other people's point of view. When she pulled up the blind this afternoon, she told me that Nancy and Barney were down in the copse and she seemed pleased."
"I told her that they'd always been like brother and sister, for I was just a little afraid, you know, that she might imagine Barney had ever cared about Nancy."