The Bishop shook his head, not speaking, thinking of the little waxen loveliness they had laid to sleep with Nan in the hollow of her arm. His lips showed their rare palsied trembling, murmuring, “Both together, Nan and the little one. She had been so well! I was not prepared--” the eyelids of his quiet gray face trembled, then opened on the blue eyes, as he said, “Of course, we know they do not die. They are alive, somewhere where the dreams come true that we dream for our children.” He smiled into her eyes, “For we are great old dreamers, aren’t we, we grandparents?” He raised his hand from the chair-arm, as if it would have pleaded, “But I think each mother needs the grandmother to help her dream. I think she is wanting you now, that Florence out there.” She faced sharp about, “Florence! Want me!” She looked at him in grim pity at his simplicity. “No, Bishop, Florence don’t want me! No more than I want her! We’re misfits, Florence and me,--worse luck for Dan, and for me, and for the baby, too, now!” The blue eyes a-twinkle, “And worse luck for Florence, too,” he persisted. “She sent you the picture. Wasn’t it perhaps to say that she wants to show you the baby himself?” “It’s like you to think that, Bishop, but it’s not like Florence to mean that. I understand Florence! I can still see her face plain, that last morning!” “You have not seen her face since there was a baby. Perhaps she understands you, too, now. Perhaps she understands, now, what it costs, to give up an only child to anyone.” “That’s it, of course, that’s what finished me up, her getting Dan, the way she has. I guess I seem pretty mean to you, but Dan was all I had.” “I think I understand,” the Bishop said quietly. Arrested by his tone she turned, “Was he good, your daughter’s husband? Did you get on with him?” “No one is good enough for an only child. Yes, he was good. He--he has been remarried for a long time, you know.” He spoke with long pauses, remembering, “Yes, I got on with him. I should have lost my daughter if I hadn’t. We had one happy year, together. Getting on is hard. But not getting on is harder.” She did not speak, turned from him again toward the window, intent, musing. “Isn’t it,” he pleaded, “harder?” “You didn’t have to,” she spoke chokily, “get on with Florence! Maybe you could, though, you, Bishop. But I couldn’t! You couldn’t maybe understand how I can’t forgive her for all that she’s taken from me,--a man couldn’t maybe understand, even you. It’s the mother working in me. They used to laugh at me over home, and say I mothered all the village. Yet now I can’t get at Dan, nor at the baby. I haven’t anyone to mother, and it seems as if it makes me sort of,” she struck away a tear with an awkward gesture, “sort of smothery!” His eyes bent on her in sharp intentness, “There is someone for you to mother!” he said. “Who?” “Florence!” “Florence!” her voice hissed. “Yes!” Her trembling lips turned hard, “I guess I’d have to forgive her first!”