When they first went to live at Three Chimneys, the children had talked a great deal about their Father, and had asked a great many questions about him, and what he was doing and where he was and when he would come home. Mother always answered their questions as well as she could. But as the time went on they grew to speak less of him. Bobbie had felt almost from the first that for some strange miserable reason these questions hurt Mother and made her sad. And little by little the others came to have this feeling, too, though they could not have put it into words.
One day, when Mother was working so hard that she could not leave off even for ten minutes, Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare room that they called Mother's workshop. It had hardly any furniture. Just a table and a chair and a rug. But always big pots of flowers on the window-sills and on the mantelpiece. The children saw to that. And from the three long uncurtained windows the beautiful stretch of meadow and moorland, the far violet of the hills, and the unchanging changefulness of cloud and sky.
“Here's your tea, Mother-love,” said Bobbie; “do drink it while it's hot.”
Mother laid down her pen among the pages that were scattered all over the table, pages covered with her writing, which was almost as plain as print, and much prettier. She ran her hands into her hair, as if she were going to pull it out by handfuls.
“Poor dear head,” said Bobbie, “does it ache?”
“No—yes—not much,” said Mother. “Bobbie, do you think Peter and Phil are FORGETTING Father?”
“NO,” said Bobbie, indignantly. “Why?”
“You none of you ever speak of him now.”
Bobbie stood first on one leg and then on the other.
“We often talk about him when we're by ourselves,” she said.
“But not to me,” said Mother. “Why?”
Bobbie did not find it easy to say why.
“I—you—” she said and stopped. She went over to the window and looked out.
“Bobbie, come here,” said her Mother, and Bobbie came.
“Now,” said Mother, putting her arm round Bobbie and laying her ruffled head against Bobbie's shoulder, “try to tell me, dear.”
Bobbie fidgeted.
“Tell Mother.”
“Well, then,” said Bobbie, “I thought you were so unhappy about Daddy not being here, it made you worse when I talked about him. So I stopped doing it.”
“And the others?”
“I don't know about the others,” said Bobbie. “I never said anything about THAT to them. But I expect they felt the same about it as me.”
“Bobbie dear,” said Mother, still leaning her head against her, “I'll tell you. Besides parting from Father, he and I have had a great sorrow—oh, terrible—worse than anything you can think of, and at first it did hurt to hear you all talking of him as if everything were just the same. But it would be much more…
