He waited, thinking she was going to add some qualification to this plain denial. Her lips indeed began to frame a syllable, when in response to some swift resolution she shook her head. "Oh, well," she said, "it doesn't matter."
There was no use denying it: it had not been the week he had expected.
[CHAPTER XIV]
THE TWO CURRENTS
Roland returned home dissatisfied with himself and anxious to vent the dissatisfaction on someone else. He was in a mood when the least thing would be likely to set him into a flaring temper, and at dinner his father provided the necessary excitant. They were considering the advisability of having the dining-room repapered and Mr Whately was doubting whether such an expensive improvement would be possible for their restricted means.
"I don't know whether we can manage that just now," he said. "We have had one or two little extras this last year or so; there was that new stair carpet and then the curtains on the second landing. I really think that we ought to be a little careful just now. Of course later on, when Roland and April are married——" And he paused to beam graciously upon his son before completing the sentence. "As I was saying, when Roland and April——" But he never completed the sentence. It remained for ever an anacoluthon. It was that beam that did it. It exasperated Roland beyond words. Its graciousness became idiocy.
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," he said. "We've heard that joke too often."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Mr Whately was for a moment too surprised to speak. He had made that little pleasantry so often that it had become part of his conversational repertory. He could not understand Roland's outburst; at first he was hurt; then he felt that he had been insulted, and, like all weak men, he was prone to stand upon his dignity.