Mathilde glanced a little fearfully at her mother. The talk seemed to her amusing, but dangerous.
“Well, then, shall we have a feud, Pete?” said Adelaide in a glass-of-wine-with-you-sir tone. “A good feud in a family can be made very amusing.”
“It would be all right for us, of course,” said Pete, “but it would be rather hard on Mathilde.”
“Mathilde is a better fighter than either of you,” put in Vincent. “Adelaide has no continuity of purpose, and you, Pete, are wretchedly kind-hearted; but Mathilde would go into it to the death.”
“Oh, I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Farron,” exclaimed Mathilde, tremendously flattered, and hoping he would go on. “I don’t like to fight.”
“Neither did Stonewall Jackson, I believe, until they fixed bayonets.”
Mathilde, dropping her eyes, saw Pete’s hand lying on the table. It was stubby, and she loved it the better for being so; it was firm and boyish and exactly like Pete. Looking up, she caught her mother’s eye, and they both remembered. For an instant indecision flickered in Adelaide’s look, but she lacked the complete courage to add that to the list—to tell any human being that she had said his hands were stubby; and so her eyes fell before her daughter’s.
As dinner went on the adjustment between the four became more nearly perfect; the gaiety, directed by Adelaide, lost all sting. But even as she talked to Pete she was only dimly aware of his existence. Her audience was her husband. She was playing for his praise and admiration, and before soup was over she knew she had it; she knew better than words could tell her that he thought her the most desirable woman in the world. Fortified by that knowledge, the pacification of a cross boy seemed to Adelaide an inconsiderable task.
By the time they rose from table it was accomplished. As they went into the drawing-room Adelaide was thinking that young men were really rather geese, but, then, one wouldn’t have them different if one could.
Vincent was thinking how completely attaching a nature like hers would always be to him, since when she yielded her will to his she did it with such complete generosity.