They stood looking at each other gravely in the silence of the gaily flowered room with the great blaze rushing up the chimney. It might have seemed that they were measuring each other. Yet they were inadequately matched, for though Raven knew Nan, it was not especially in her relation to him, and she knew herself and him intimately, in their common bond. The woman was the more intuitive, but the man was no less honest. She thought a moment now, her gaze unseeingly following the pattern of the rug at her feet. "Very well," she said. "I'll go over to the house and get some things, and I'll stay." There were, they both knew, bureau drawers full of Aunt Anne's things, doubtless in the perfect order that was a part of her exquisite mastery of life. She disliked traveling with a cumbersome outfit, even from the city to this ancestral foothold. Everything possible was left behind her in each place. "I'll go with you," said Raven. She should not poke into the cold house alone for the first time since she had inherited it, and encounter the desolation of change. They went downstairs and out into the road, Charlotte looking from the window after them and wondering if they were bound on some jaunt that would leave her to encounter Mrs. Powell undefended. Nan's spirits always came up in the out-of-doors. She was a normal creature, needing to be quickened only by full air. She began to laugh. "Rookie," she said, "I could tell you something funny." "Fire away," said Raven. "It's about my staying. I didn't bring any real things, because I knew I could come over here and get some, but my toothbrush is right here in my coat pocket. Don't you see, Rookie? I was going to stay if you made me, but not if you didn't, and you weren't to know I so much as thought of it." "Humbug!" said Raven. "I might ha' knowed."