“Don’t begin till we reach your gate,” Fred said. “I’m going to leave you and Harlan there and go back to the club. But when I spoke of your speech I didn’t mean the one you made over by the fireplace, the one all about your son’s being the meaning of the universe and gods and everything. I meant your last speech—not a speech exactly, but what you said to Martha.”
“I didn’t say anything to her except ‘good-night.’ ”
“It seemed to me you did,” Fred said apologetically. “I may be wrong, but it seemed to me you said something more. Didn’t it seem so to you, Harlan?”
“Yes, it did,” Harlan answered briefly. The group had paused at the Oliphants’ gate, and he opened it, about to pass within.
But his cousin detained him. “Wait a moment, I mean about Dan’s hoping the baby would grow up to look like Martha. Didn’t it strike you——”
Dan laughed. “Oh, that? No; I said something about hoping he’d grow up to be like her: I meant I hoped he’d have her qualities.”
“I see,” young Mr. Oliphant said pensively. “The only reason it struck me as peculiar was I thought that was what the father usually said to the mother.”
Thereupon he lifted his hat politely, bowed and walked away, leaving both of the brothers staring after him.
CHAPTER XV
HIS humour was misplaced, and both of them would have been nothing less than dismayed could they have foreseen in what manner he was destined to misplace it again, and to what damage; for not gossip, nor scandal, nor slander’s very self can leave a trail more ruinous than may a merry bit of drollery misplaced. The occasion of the catastrophe was not immediate, however; it befell a month later, when the Oliphants made a celebration to mark the arrival of the baby and the completed recovery of the baby’s mother. Mrs. Oliphant gave a “family dinner.”