"No, no," I said hastily. "I know exactly where I left them. I won't be a minute."
Luckily the flowers and cream were where I had left them. I detest the idea of arranging any part of one's toilet in public, but I did not want the critical eyes of Dicky's mother to see my reddened eyes, and roughened hair, which had been slightly loosened in my hurry.
There was a mirror near the telephone booth at the back of the store.
I took off my fur cap, smoothed back my hair and put on the cap again.
From my purse I took a tiny powder puff and removed the traces of
tears. Then I fairly snatched my parcels and hurried to the door.
Dicky was just entering the store as I reached it. His face was black.
I saw that he was in one of his rages.
"Look here, Madge," he said, and he made no pretense of lowering his voice, "do you think my mother enjoys sitting there in that taxicab waiting for you? She was so fatigued by her journey that she didn't even want to have her baggage looked after, something unusual for her. That is the reason we got here so early. And now she is positively faint for a cup of tea, and you are fiddling around here over a lot of flowers."
If he had made no reference to his mother's faintness, I should have answered him spiritedly. But I remembered my own little mother, and her longing when fatigued for a cup of hot tea.
"I'm awfully sorry, Dicky," I said meekly. "You see you arrived before I thought you would. I'll get the tea for her the moment we reach the house."
But Dicky was not mollified. He stalked moodily ahead of me until he reached the open door of the taxicab. Then his manner underwent a sudden change. One would have thought him the most devoted of husbands to see him draw me forward.
"Mother," he said, and my heart glowed even in its resentment at the note of pride in his voice, "this is my wife. Madge, my mother."
Mrs. Graham was leaning back against the cushions of the taxicab. If she had not looked so white and ill I should have resented the look of displeasure that rested upon her features.
"How do you do?" she said coldly. "You must pardon me, I am afraid, for not saying the usual things. I have been very much upset."