“There are widows,” said Rachel, gently.

“Yes; and the ‘fatherless and the widows’ are everybody’s charge to care for.  I said—­if things were right.  I wish the energy was spent in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the wrong.”

“They say there are too many women in the world altogether!” said Marion, squarely.

“I guess not—­for all the little children,” said Frank Sunderline; and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender.

He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and they went up the long steps to the street.  All three walked on without more remark, for a little way.  Then Marion broke out in her odd fashion,—­

“Ray Ingraham! you’ve got a home and everything sure and comfortable.  Just tell me what you’d do, if you were a widow and fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge.”

“The thing I knew best, I suppose,” said Rachel, quietly.  “I think very likely I could be—­a baker.  But I’m certain of this much,” she added lightly.  “I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed to me a man’s perversion of the idea of bread.”

A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke, from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm.

As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind.  The doctor’s chaise,—­the horse fastened by the well-known strap and weight,—­was standing before the house.  She quickened her steps, without speaking.

“I say,” called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and knowing eagerness,—­“Yer know yer father’s sick?  Fit—­or sunthin’!”

But Ray made no sign—­to anybody.  She had already hurried in toward the side door, through the yard, under the elm.

A neighborly looking woman—­such a woman as always “steps in” on an emergency—­met her at the entrance.  “He’s dreadful sick, I’m afraid, dear,” she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray’s shoulder.  “The doctor’s up-stairs; ben there an hour.  And I believe my soul every identical child in the village’s ben sent in for a brick loaf.”

Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road.  The conversation was broken off.  It was a startling occurrence that had interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something that one was most anxious to say.  A very little straw will do it.  It is like a game at croquet.  The ball you want to hit lies close; but it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed.  Nothing lies where it did a minute before.  You yourself are driven off, and forced into different combinations.