"And you joined in?"
"Sotto voce, as it were." Reed laughed at the memory. "You see, I had to be properly lugubrious, to tally up to his impressions of what I ought to be. He had been here just a week, then, and he had me down pat. Somebody must have coached him grandly, and he's the sort who revels in woe and in consequent and ghostly consolation."
Olive's eyes were fixed upon the view outside the window.
"Poor old Reed! And then?"
"Then?" Opdyke shot her a glance of merry mockery. "That night, after he had trundled me off to bed, Ramsdell stood and gazed down at me with a new respect. 'I must say, Mr. Hopdyke,' he told me; 'you 'ave been in grand form, hall this evening. I never 'eard you do any finer swearing in hall the time I've been with you.'"
"And that comes of a moral influence!" Dolph laughed. "If that's the way he is going to affect sinners, Brenton will have his hands full, following up his curate's trail."
"Brenton is of different stuff," Reed made crispy comment.
"Have you noticed the change in Mr. Brenton since the baby came, Reed?" Olive inquired abruptly.
"I've hardly seen him. From all accounts, he is devoting most of his spare time to my father. What is the baby like, Olive?"
"Ugly as sin; but Mr. Brenton believes him an Adonis."