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David mumbled a word or two in a voice that seemed to come from his stomach; it sounded like, "Like you best." But Dr. Lavendar did not hear it, and David ran swiftly back to the rabbits. There Helena found him, gazing through two large tears at the opal-eyed pair behind the wooden bars.
That's a counsel of perfection, perhaps, but don't slay me for plain-speaking, Mrs. Loring!" Robinette laughed. "I'll never slay you for saying anything so wise and true as that!" she said, and Lavendar, flushing under her praise, was charmed with her good humour. "America's a very large country, is it not?" enquired Miss Smeardon with her usual brilliancy. "What is its area?"
"I'm sorry for him," he said to Doctor Lavendar. "We will acknowledge you to-morrow," Carl Robertson said. "I won't acknowledge you," his son flung back at him. "All these years you have hidden behind Aunty. Stay hidden. I won't betray you." Mary had dropped down into her father's chair; her face was covered by her hands on the desk. They heard her sob.
"It is hard for you," Lavendar replied, "because you have a natural affection for your mother's old nurse; and Mrs. de Tracy, I begin to believe, is more than indifferent to her. She has some active dislike, perhaps, the source of which is unknown to us." "But she is so unjust!" cried Robinette. "I never heard of an Irish landlord in a novel who would practice such a piece of eviction.
"I can't," Samuel Wright said hoarsely, and into his hard eyes came the same look of childish terror that the old minister had seen in Benjamin Wright's face when he sat in the hot sunshine watching the canaries. Then Dr. Lavendar began to plead.... It was a long struggle. Sometimes it really seemed as if, as the senior warden had said, he "could not" do it; as if it were a physical impossibility.
According to my poor theories of propriety, a man who lets another man support his wife had better not have one." "But you ought not to have put it that way," Dr. Lavendar protested, "I merely put the fact," said Samuel Wright "Furthermore, unless he stops dangling at her apron-strings, I shall stop his allowance, I shall so inform him." "You surely won't do such a foolish thing!"
Lavendar had so often spoken, but the startling and unconventional nature of his appearance was not at all what one expected in a member of his family.
"Well," he said, as the doctor's wife opened the door, "how are you, Martha?" "Very tired," said Mrs. King. "And dear me, Dr. Lavendar, you look tired yourself. You're too old to do so much, sir. Come in and sit down." "I'll sit down," said Dr. Lavendar, dropping into a chair in the parlor; "but don't flatter yourself, Martha, that you'll ever be as young as I am!"
"Now we can have some fun, and I'll perhaps make her see that old Lavendar isn't the only companion in the world." "She minds," thought Miss Smeardon, "for she buttered that piece of bread on the one side a minute ago, and now she's just done it on the other and eaten it too." "She doesn't care a bit," thought Lavendar.
"Wednesday, at the latest, are my orders," she answered merrily, and with the words ringing in his ears Lavendar took his departure. "Do you remember that this is the afternoon of the garden party at Revelsmere?" Mrs. de Tracy enquired, coming into the drawing room a few minutes later, where Mrs. Loring stood by the open window.
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