Apparently his mother did not find it so. She asked, "What had been the
matter with her, did she say?"

"In her long sickness? Oh! A nervous fever of some sort."

"From worrying about that experience?"

Verrian reluctantly admitted, "She said it made her want to die. I don't
suppose we can quite realize--"

"We needn't believe everything she said to realize that she suffered.
But girls exaggerate their sufferings. I suppose you told her not to
think of it any more?"

Verrian gave an odd laugh. "Well, not unconditionally. I tried to give
her my point of view. And I stipulated that she should tell Jerusha
Brown all about it, and keep her from having a nervous fever, too."

"That was right. You must see that even cowardice couldn't excuse her
selfishness in letting that girl take all the chances."

"And I'm afraid I was not very unselfish myself in my stipulations,"
Verrian said, with another laugh. "I think that I wanted to stand well
with the postmaster."

There was a note of cynical ease in this which Mrs. Verrian found morally
some octaves lower than the pitch of her son's habitual seriousness in
what concerned himself, but she could not make it a censure to him. "And
you were able to reassure her, so that she needn't think of it any more?"