“I really do think you might help a little! It looks so odd, and all my friends think you peculiar enough already.”
Brought back with a shock to the deadly importance of the ordinary routine, North became flippant. “You don’t mean to say they tell you so?” he asked.
“It’s easy enough to guess what they must think, without any telling,” retorted his wife. “At any rate, if you can’t behave with common civility yourself, you might let Fred come and help me. Fred, I have arranged for cold supper at 8.30. Will you come at once and look after the friends you brought down, while Violet and I change. And don’t, I beg you, for Violet’s sake, get into the same ways as her father.”
Riversley followed her meekly across the lawn. “I’m really awfully sorry,” he apologized. “Is there anything else I can do?”
Then he stopped. His mother-in-law was immersed in a group of her guests saying good-bye, and his eyes had found the figure they always sought. Outside the front door, Lady Condor, her scarves, gloves, and glasses, were all being packed carefully into her bath-chair, and a little way down the drive was his wife. In front of her, just out of arm’s length, were the little pack of West Highlanders, barking furiously. She stooped down, coaxing them to come and be petted.
He progressed across the lawn towards her in his usual rather ponderous fashion, and stood watching. All the light of the sun seemed for him to centre round that slim white figure. It touched the smooth dark silk of her hair with a crown of glory, and found no flaw in the clear pale skin, the rose-red mouth. Those slender hands held out to the dogs, he would have followed them to the end of the earth. He loved all of her, with every thing he had or was.
Presently she gave up her hopeless efforts, and, standing to her full height, looked at him across the still barking dogs.
“They have forgotten me, the little pigs!” she said. “They won’t even let me pat them.”
But Riversley knew, even as dogs do not resent where they love, neither do they forget.