If the situation had its pathetic side for poor Dick Dennehy, there was more than one aspect on which a sense of humour could lay hold. Besides Dick, impelled by love yet racked by conscience, and, in consequence, by chimney-pots in the middle distance, there were the Aikenheads. Engrossed in one another, in their studies and theories, they saw nothing of what was going on under—and seemed now to Winnie as plain to see as—their noses. They had bestowed immense pains on the house, and had counted on giving Dick a triumphant surprise. His behaviour—for even after dinner he achieved but a very halting enthusiasm—was a sore disappointment. They understood neither why he was not delighted nor why, failing that, in common decency and gratitude he could not make a better show of being delighted. Good-tempered as they were, they could not help betraying their feelings—Tora by a sudden and stony silence touching the house of whose beauties she had been so full; Stephen by satirical remarks about the heights of splendour on which Dick now required to be seated in his daily life and surroundings. Dick marked their vexation and understood it, but could not so transform his demeanour as to remove it, and, being unable to do that, began by a natural movement of the mind to resent it. "They really might see that there's something else the matter," he argued within himself in plaintive vexation. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, the three were manifestly at odds on this false issue, and the tension threatened to become greater and greater. It was all ridiculous, a comedy of mistakes, but it might end in a sad straining of an old and dear friendship.
To avert this catastrophe, Winnie determined to give the go-by to coy modesty. Dick Dennehy had not told her that he loved her, but she determined to acquaint the Aikenheads with the interesting fact. What would happen after that she did not know, but it seemed the only thing to do at the moment.
After lunch on the second day of the visit, Dick Dennehy, in a desperate effort to be more gracious, said that he would go across and have another look at the house. Nobody offered to accompany him. Tora seemed not to hear his remark; Stephen observed sarcastically that Dick might consider the desirability of adding a ball-room and a theatre, and with that returned to his labours on the Synopsis. Winnie sat smiling while Dick departed and left her alone with Tora.
"You think he's not appreciative enough about the house, don't you, Tora?" she asked.
"I think he just hates it, but I really don't know why."
"It's not his own house that he hates; it's my chimneys."
"Your chimneys? What in the world do you mean?"
"He can see them from his study window—just where he wants to be undisturbed."
Tora might be a profound speculative thinker, but, no, she was not quick in the little matters of the world. "Do you mean to say that the man objects to seeing any single house from his windows? Really Dick is putting on airs!"
"It depends on who lives in the single house."