"Don't pretend ignorance," she snapped. "You introduced the man to me yourself the night before you went on your trip. You cannot have forgotten his name so soon."
"Robert Gordon!" Dicky exclaimed in amazement.
"Yes, Robert Gordon!" his mother returned grimly. "And let me tell you, Richard Graham, that if you do not settle that man he will make you the laughing stock and the scandal of everybody. The way he talks of Margaret is disgusting."
Dicky's face became suddenly stern and set.
"He didn't exhibit his lack of good taste the first time he came over to my table in the dining room," my mother-in-law went on. "But the second time he sat down with me he began to talk of Margaret in the most fulsome, extravagant manner. From that time his sole topic of conversation was Margaret, the wonderful woman she had grown into, the wonderful attraction she has for him. You would have thought him a man who had discovered his lost sweetheart after years of wandering. Imagine the lack of decency and good taste the man must have to say such things to me, the mother of Margaret's husband!"
"Is that all you have to say, mother?" he asked.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Are you lost to all decency that you do not resent such extravagant praise and admiration of your wife from the lips of another man?" she demanded, and then in the same breath went on rapidly:
"Richard, you are perfectly hopeless! The man may have been in love with Margaret's mother, I do not doubt that he was, but have you never heard of such men falling in love with the daughters of the women they once loved hopelessly?"
"Don't make the poor man out a potential Mormon, mother!" Dicky jibed.