She was sure he needed it and it would set her mind at ease.

He told her what she knew well enough, how impossible it would be for him to leave the mills and be absent long.
She who rarely manufactured difficulties now began to ask how this was to be done and that, until Rivers said at last, "I can promise to read at the hospital until I go away for my August holiday." "You would not know the kind of things to read." "No one could do it as well as you," said Rivers, "but I can try." "Everything will be cared for, Ann," said Penhallow, "only don't worry." "I never worry," she returned, rising.

"You men think everything will run along easily without a woman's attention." "Oh, but Ann, my dear Ann!" exclaimed Penhallow, not knowing what more to say, annoyed at the discussion and at her display of unnecessary temper and the entire loss of her usual common sense.
She said, with a laugh in which there was no mirth, "I presume one of you will, of course, run my sewing-class ?" "Ann--Ann!" said the Squire.
Rivers understood her now in the comprehending sympathy of his own too frequent moods of melancholy.

"Ah!" he murmured, "if I could but teach her how to knit the ravelled sleeve of care." "I presume," she added, "that I am to accept it as settled," and so went out.
"Come, John," said Penhallow an hour later, "call the dogs--I must have a good hard tramp, and a talk with you!" John kept pace with, the rapid stride of the Squire, taking note of the reddening buds of the maples, for this year in the hills the spring came late.
"You must have seen your aunt's condition," said Penhallow.

"I have seen it coming on ever since that miserable affair of Josiah.