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He put on his white silk pajamas, thrust his feet into slippers, tossed the silk-lined linen robe about his broad, too square shoulders, and led the way into the other room. Then he said: "Do you mean Margaret Severence?" "That's it!" exclaimed Craig, pacing the floor. "I've gone and got myself engaged "
I'm going to hurry away to grandmother, to try to repair the damage you did." She rose and called, "Lucia! Lucia!" The round, rosy, rather slovenly Miss Severence appeared in the little balcony the only part of the house in view from where they sat. "Telephone the stables for the small victoria," called Margaret. "Mother's out in it," replied Lucia. "Then the small brougham." "I want that.
Severence, pink-and-white, middle-aged, fattish and obviously futile, watched him with increasing nervousness. He would surely break something; or, being by a window when the impulse to depart seized him, would leap through, taking sash, curtains and all with him. "Perhaps we'd better go outdoors," suggested she. She felt very helpless, as usual.
Arkwright examined Craig's face for signs that this was the biting sarcasm it would have seemed, coming from another. But Craig was apparently merely making one of his familiar bumptious speeches. The idea of a man of his humble origin proclaiming himself superior to an Arkwright of the Massachusetts Arkwrights! "No, I'd not marry your Miss Severence," Craig continued.
She called up the Arkwrights, asked for Grant. "Wake him," she said. "If he is still in bed tell him Miss Severence wishes to speak to him at once." Within a moment Grant's agitated voice was coming over the wire: "Is that you, Rita? What is the matter?" "Come out here as soon as you can. How long will it be?" "An hour. I really must shave." "In an hour, then. Good-by."
Just now, in the matter of Margaret Severence, this universal overlordship filled him with rage, the more furious that he realized he could no more shake Josh's conviction than he could make the Washington monument topple over into the Potomac by saying, "Be thou removed."
"You think a man as shrewd as Stillwater would marry his daughter to a nobody?" "It's useless for you to argue, Margaret," snapped the old lady. "The man's impossible for a Severence. I shall stop the engagement." "You can't," rejoined Margaret calmly. "My mind is made up. And along with several other qualities, Grandmother, dear, I've inherited your will."
Miss Severence flushed. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I did not mean to offend." "No," replied Craig. "You simply meant to amuse yourself with me. And because I don't know what to do with my hands and because my coat fits badly, you thought I wouldn't realize what you were doing. You are very narrow you fashionable people. You don't even know that everybody ought to be judged on his own ground.
And he rushed out by the window that opened on the veranda, leaving the amazed butler at the door, uncertain what to do. Mrs. Severence, ascending the stairs in high good humor with herself at having handled a sudden and difficult situation as well as she had ever read of its being handled in a novel, met her daughter descending.
"Williams, show this gentlemen out." And she left the room. Williams, all frigid dignity and politeness, stood at the large entrance doors, significantly holding aside one curtain. Craig rose, his face red. "Mrs. Severence isn't very well," said he noisily to the servant, as if he were on terms of closest intimacy with the family. "Tell Margaret I'll wait for her in the garden."
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