During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each
other's arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had
paused before her.

"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys
go back there to have it out!"

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to
tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened
duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to
Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a
slow-moving elder.

Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed
her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk.

"--and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite
confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm sure he would wish you
to know. Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as
he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply
them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of
view. But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful
case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless
chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his
mind at all well before thirty-five. Of course, divorce is an evil that,
broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life--no one
understands that better than your husband--and re-marriage after divorce
is usually an outrageous scandal--one, indeed, altogether too
common--sometimes I wonder what we're coming to, it seems to be done so
thoughtlessly--but individual instances are different--'exceptions prove