It happened, I believe at the foot of the steps of a club. Hugh, who was passing, saw his father coming down, and waited. Howard Brokenshire brought into play his faculty of seeing without seeing, and went on majestically, while Hugh stared after him with tears of vexation in his eyes.
"He felt it the more," Mrs. Rossiter stated in her impartial way, "because I doubt if he had the price of his dinner in his pocket."
It was then that she gave me to understand that if it were not that Mildred was lending him money he would have nothing to subsist on at all. Mildred had a little from her grandfather Brew, being privileged in this respect because she was the only one of the first Mrs. Brokenshire's children born at the time of the grandfather's demise. The legacy had been a trifle, but from this fund, which had never been his father's, Hugh consented to take loans.
"Hugh, darling," I said to him the next time I had speech with him, "don't you see now that he's irreconcilable? He'll either starve you into surrender—"
"Never," he cried, thumping the table with his hand.
"Or else you must take such work as you can get."
"Such work as I can get! Do you know how much that would bring me in a week?"
"Even so," I reasoned, "you'd have work and I should have work, and we'd live."
He was hurt.
"Americans don't believe in working their women," he declared, loftily. "If I can't give you a life in which you'll have nothing at all to do—"