The Family
“A very expensive one, for a poor professor.
And not much rest.”
A look of sharp anxiety came into Mrs. St. Peter’s face. “You mean,” she breathed in a hushed voice, “that she let you——”
He cut in sharply. “I mean that I paid my way, as I hope always to be able to do. Any suggestion to the contrary might have been very graceful, but it would have been rejected. I am quite ready to permit myself a little extravagance to be of service to the women of my family. Any other arrangement is humiliating.”
“Then that was why you didn’t get your fur coat.”
“That may have been one reason. I was not much in the humour for it.”
Mrs. St. Peter went swiftly downstairs to make him a cocktail. She sensed an unusual weariness in him, and felt, as it were, the bitter taste on his tongue. A man, she knew, could get from his daughter a peculiar kind of hurt—one of the cruellest that flesh is heir to. Her heart ached for Godfrey.
When the Professor had been warmed and comforted by a good dinner, he lit a cigar and sat down before the hearth to read. After a while his wife saw that the book had slid to his knee, and he was looking into the fire. Studying his dark profile, she noticed that the corners of his funny eyebrows rose, as if he were amused by something.
—155—
