"By which you mean of course a lot of money."
"Well, not only. I'm acting with a sense for him of other things
too. Consideration and comfort and security--the general safety of
being anchored by a strong chain. He wants, as I see him, to be
protected. Protected I mean from life."
"Ah voila!"--her thought fitted with a click. "From life. What you
REALLY want to get him home for is to marry him."
"Well, that's about the size of it."
"Of course," she said, "it's rudimentary. But to any one in
particular?"
He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious. "You get
everything out."
For a moment again their eyes met. "You put everything in!"
He acknowledged the tribute by telling her. "To Mamie Pocock."
She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the
oddity also fit: "His own niece?"
"Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation. His
brother-in-law's sister. Mrs. Jim's sister-in-law."
It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect. "And
who in the world's Mrs. Jim?"
"Chad's sister--who was Sarah Newsome. She's married--didn't I
mention it?--to Jim Pocock."
"Ah yes," she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things--!
Then, however, with all the sound it could have, "Who in the
world's Jim Pocock?" she asked.
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