"Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing would induce me to belong to the family that had produced him?"
She laughed. "Oh, yes. He told me the whole thing, how you'd come into his room, how Guy had got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle between you."
"And did he say how it had ended?"
"He said—if you want to know exactly I'll tell you exactly—he said that when it came to talking about the war and the part he would have to play in it, you weren't as big a damn fool as he had thought you."
"And did he say how big a damn fool he was himself?"
"He admitted he had been one; but with his father on his hands, and the war, and all that, he'd have to put the brakes on himself, and pretend to be a good boy."
Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to the blaze of the fire. Hildred had sent for him because Mrs. Ansley was out of the way at her Mothers' Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since she would not conceal the fact accomplished. It avoided only a preliminary struggle. If she needed an excuse, the necessities of their good intentions toward Tad would offer it.
Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of embroidery, had taken up a piece of work. Like many women, she found it easier to be daring in an incidental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from having to look at Tom as she reverted to the phase of the subject from which they had drifted away.
"The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. They may even be called distinguished. I don't see what it is you've got against them."