"I know. Best to remain discreet. Still, if we were wed----" "It's not fitting, John. The gossip that's gone on about us, all these years, it's become a--a--what's the word I want?" "A commonplace?" "Yes, of course--that, with a pox. But don't you see?--if we was to wed now there'd be talk of another kind, and then--then I must be Madam Kenny and bear it like a lady, which I am _not_, John, and cannot be. Oh, let be as it is! I'd be most wretched, John--truly.... As you say, the boys would never speak of it. I know them too. I love them too, John." "Well.... If it were spoken I suppose Ben would be--embarrassed, let us say, because he's much aware of social opinion. And Reuben--who looketh down upon social opinion from his own mountaintop like a puzzled angel--Reuben would hold some thought about it which I could never understand, never interpret--Kate, I don't _know_ them!... I can't see my own youth, Kate. I think of it. A thousand things keep coming back to me now that never did so in my fifties, or sixties--my father's sniff, my Aunt Jessica's passion for setting the furniture exactly parallel to the walls and washing her hands a hundred times a day--damme, the very shape of a knot in the ash stick my father used for correcting me, and didn't I count it a great thing won if I was hit with the plain part of the stick and not with the knob! How Ru would have loathed him! I did too, but a long time after he was dead I suppose I acquired a certain comprehension, even gratitude in some matters. Well, those things come back, but only like little pictures, Kate. I can't _feel_ how it was, to be a youth of Ben's age. I only know that once I was, and that in a world nothing like the one they live in, nothing like.... Mr. Welland stopped by at my office today." "Mr. Welland!" "Nay, nothing to do with illness. I now learn, Kate, that our Reuben hath suddenly decided he wishes to study medicine." "Marry come up!" "Ye-es. Well, I wish he might have discussed it with me first, but from what Mr. Welland told me, I believe the thought came suddenly, and I suppose Ru felt unready to speak to me about it, and Mr. Welland being in town anyway on some other errand--mph, anyway, so it is. Maybe a passing thing--but Welland seemed to think not, and was earnest, nay almost impassioned in telling me he thought the boy had a true call to it. I like Welland of course--honest man, courteous too, said he would be pleased to take Reuben as apprentice, by whatever arrangement suited my own plans for him. Man of learning too--I found we share many interests.... Damn the thing, I could have wished better for Reuben than--oh, pills, syrups, the whining of sick people, exposing himself to dangerous ills, but...." "That's what troubled you today?" "Uh--well, no. Of course I must have some talk with Reuben about this in--well, in a day or two...." "Tell Kate." "Kate, I have done a thing, the which seemed right to me at the time, and still does, but...."