Then she turned to work and refused to think of anything else until the clock struck four. On the first stroke she closed and locked the desk.
Usually Jean reached the tea-room first. She liked it so. She liked to be there a few moments ahead, to listen to the hum of women's voices, catch scraps of conversation from a world of other interests, and then, to look up and see Gregory cutting through it straight to her. It set her apart, made her a direct choice in a concrete way that never failed to make her heart give an extra throb.
But to-day Gregory was already there. He was sitting with his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand. With his free hand he traced idle designs on the tablecloth. At the sight of Jean he rose and drew out her chair, letting his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders, which was the only caress the publicity allowed. But as he took his own place again, Jean saw the worried look in his eyes. Gregory rarely came troubled to tea, and when he did, it took only a few moments to drive it away. Sometimes she liked him to be a little tired, for the joy of dissipating it.
"Well, how did things go to-day?" It was their stock beginning, but to-day there was a forced interest in the tone that struck through Jean's gayety.
"Great! I've been fired."
"That's a good cause for gratitude." For a moment they smiled in understanding of their own viewpoint. Then the tea and muffins came and Jean began to describe Dr. Pedloe's disapproval of her and all her works. Gregory listened and his eyes appreciated the points as Jean made them. But he offered no comments of his own and suddenly Jean wondered whether he was listening at all. Gregory never sat attending in that absent way. Fear crept on Jean, but she pushed it aside. If it were something serious he would tell her. But nothing very terrible could have happened in the twenty-four hours since she had seen him. His work was going well and he was pleased with the designs for the contest. Still he sat there, crumbling the muffin which he made no pretense of eating. Jean went on with the telling, but her own interest lessened.
Across the table, Gregory believed he was listening with the outward show of interest he always felt. But there was no real interest in him. For Puck was sick. She had been ailing for several days, and this morning the doctor had come, and after he had looked at Puck and talked a little with Margaret, he had telephoned for a nurse. Gregory's nerves were still taut with the anxiety of waiting for the doctor to come from Puck and tell him what was the matter. Like all persons unused to illness, he wanted the relief of a specific name. It localized the danger and brought the enemy into the open. He had steeled himself to anything, for Margaret's excited helplessness had ended in a burst of hysteria and he knew he would have to face it alone. Then the door of Puck's room had opened and the doctor beckoned to him. Puck's fever-bright eyes looked at him without recognition, and Gregory knew that if Puck died he would remember her always like that, so small in her white bed, with no smile of welcome for him, and unconscious of Lady Jane by her side.
"There is nothing to worry about, but I will be frank with you, there is a lot to look out for. Your child is one of the finest samples of modern, high-strung baby nerves that I have seen in a long while. That fever doesn't amount to anything and she will be up in a few days. It won't be necessary for me to come again, so I will tell you now, keep her back. She is too old for her years already. She has inherited a rather hysterical nervous tendency, but she's got a will of iron too. She rarely cries, does she? No, I thought not. If she threw things around and had what old-fashioned parents used to call 'a bad temper,' she would let off the steam that way. But she doesn't. We grown-ups forget all about our own childhood. There, I guess that's all. Keep her back. Don't reason with her too much. She thinks too hard, anyhow. A little of the plain old-style faith in what mother says or father says is wonderfully restful, like believing in God when we grow up. See that she has other children to play with, and keep an eye on her yourself. We men so often think that children are—any woman's special province."
Gregory had sat on beside Puck's bed until the nurse came. And for the first time since they had put Puck, a wailing mite, into his arms, he had felt helpless, inadequate, lost in the problem of the small person, so distinctly a bit of himself. And of Margaret....
He had come to meet Jean, full of the need to talk about this, to get a little of her sanity. But now, sitting opposite her, he could not do it. It belonged so completely to the world outside their world. How could he tell any one, Jean least of all, this fear that Puck might grow up like her mother? For the first time, tea with Jean was an effort, held something of the same quality that the forced cheerfulness of dinners with Margaret had. As he crumbled his muffin and listened, Gregory tried to be just. It was not fair to Jean to drag his worries into their hour, but the effort to keep them out tangled his already too complex world almost to breaking.