"Daddy!"
"Well, Pucklets!"
Jean knew that the man bent and lifted the child to his shoulder.
"And how goes it? Lady Jane had any fever to-day?"
Jean went quickly to the window. With the coldness of the glass against her forehead, she tried to think. The murmur of Margaret's voice directing Annie came from the kitchen. In the hall Gregory was hanging up his overcoat. Puck's high treble fluted in a string of words that conveyed nothing. Gregory had come home, back to this world of which he was the central pivot. The very air was changed, charged with a vigor that it had lacked. And she, an outsider, was closed in there with them. Jean gripped the window-shelf and waited.
"Daddy, Mrs. Herrick likes Lady Jane too."
They were almost at the door. Without turning, Jean felt the man stop, Margaret had not told him.
Jean turned and stood with her hands hanging quietly at her sides. Puck clinging to him, Gregory crossed the threshold. It was Jean who spoke first.
"Indeed I do like Lady Jane."
Jean felt that she was throwing the words to him, aiming blindly and hoping that he would catch them. For the smile with which he had listened to Lady Jane's symptoms was still in his eyes, as if consciousness had been killed at that moment.