“No, I don’t!” Lena answered so sharply that Dick started in surprise, and she gathered herself together.
“It would take a long time for me to explain things to you,” she went on in gentler accents. “But, Dick, mother and I are not very happy together. I’ll tell you all about it some time. Perhaps she would be just as contented to live somewhere else.”
“Very well,” said Dick with a sense of relief. “We must make her comfortable, of course.” In reality nobody else’s comfort made a rap’s difference just then. “I dare say we can find some jolly little apartment and somebody to take care of her.”
“Hire somebody for her to find fault with,” said Lena, with a return of acid. “What about your mother?”
“Oh, I couldn’t let mother live anywhere but in the dear old home. It’s too big and lonely for her by herself, so we must share it with her. And no other place would ever have the flavor of home, either to her or to me.”
Lena stopped short in her progress.
“Does the house belong to you or to her?”
“Technically to me, I believe—not that it makes the slightest difference, dear.”
“Then I should be mistress of it, not she?”
“I’m sure she’d be only too glad to turn the housekeeping cares over to your pretty little hands,” said Dick, smiling, but a little uneasily. “She’s a good deal of an invalid, you know. But there’s plenty of time to think of all these details. I suppose you’ve had to worry about the little things until it’s become a habit,” he added in a kind of apology to himself.