‘He’ll grow up a fighter,’ said Harvey.  ’We can’t do without fighters.  I’ll make inquiry at once about a school for him, and in a year or two we’ll take counsel with his teachers.  Perhaps he might go into the navy.’

‘The cost of it all,’ fell from his companion in a nervous undertone.

‘We had that out long ago.  Don’t think about it.’

‘Of course, you will send only half the money when Albert leaves me,’ said Mrs. Abbott earnestly.  ’I shall be in no difficulty.  I have had letters from several people, asking me to take their little children to live with me.  Albert’s place will be filled at once.  I can’t take more into the house; there’s no room.  With them, and my kindergarten, and the lessons I give in the evening, I can live very well.’

Harvey mused.  Wishing to feel himself in complete sympathy with his friend, he knew that something of the old criticism still tempered his liking.  Mary Abbott had fine qualities, but lacked the simplicity, the directness, which would have made her courage wholly admirable.  He suspected that she continually mourned over what seemed to her a waste of life.  Proud of her ‘culture’, remembering her distinction as a teacher of grown-up girls, she had undertaken as a penitence the care of little children, and persevered in it with obstinacy rather than with inspired purpose.  Mary Abbott, doubtless, had always regarded life as a conflict; she had always fought for her own hand.  When such a nature falls into genuine remorse, asceticism will inevitably follow; with it comes the danger of more or less conscious embitterment.  Harvey had a conviction of his friend’s sincerity, and believed her in every way a better woman than in the days before her great sorrow; but he could not yet assure himself that she had found her true vocation.

They spoke of the people who were so anxious to be relieved of their children.

’One lady wrote to me that she would pay almost anything if I would take her little boy and keep him all the year round; she has only a small house, and the child utterly upsets her life.  Of course, I understand her; I should have sympathised with her once.’

‘It’s intelligible enough,’ replied Harvey, with a laugh.  ’Presently there will be huge establishments for the young children of middle-class people.  Naturally, children are a nuisance; especially so if you live in a whirlpool.’

‘Yes, I know it too well, the whirlpool way of life,’ said Mrs. Abbott, her eyes on the far mountains.  ’I know how easily one is drawn into it.  It isn’t only idle people.’

’Of course not.  There’s the whirlpool of the furiously busy.  Round and round they go; brains humming till they melt or explode.  Of course, they can’t bother with children.’

‘One loses all sense of responsibility.’