Perhaps more had come through Ann than was in Ann, but beneath all else, deeper even than that warm tenderness flowering from Ann's need of her, was that tenderness of the awakened spirit--a grateful song coming through an opening door.
It had so claimed her that she was startled at sound of Mrs.Prescott's voice as she said, with a nervous little laugh: "Why, Katie, you alarm me.

You make me feel she must be strange." "She is strange," said Katie.
"Would you say, Katie," she asked anxiously, "that she is the sort of girl to make my boy a good wife ?" Suddenly the idea of Ann's making Harry Prescott any kind of wife came upon Katie as preposterous.

Not because she would be bringing him a "past," but because she would bring gifts he would not know what to do with.
"I don't think of Ann as the making some man a good wife type.

I think of Ann," she tried to formulate it, "as having gone upon a quest, as being ever upon a quest." "A--quest ?" faltered Mrs.Prescott.

"For what ?" "Life," said Katie, peering off into the darkness.
Mrs.Prescott was manifestly disturbed at the prospect of a daughter-in-law upon a quest.