He did not come home until one o’clock, but there was a light in the library, and, going in, he found his mother reading “In Memoriam.” She had begun to stoop after her husband’s death, and her hair had lost its last touch of gray; it was all white now, so that even to the glamouring eyes of her son she had come to be a little, fragile old lady; but her good will to all the world still looked forth through the thick glass of her spectacles.
“Why, mother! You oughtn’t to be up this late!”
“I just got to reading——” she explained. “I like to read on a rainy night. Did you lock the front door?”
“Yes. Isn’t Lena in?”
“Yes. Mr. McMillan brought her home an hour ago. Yes; she’s in.”
Dan laughed, noting her emphasis. “ ‘She is?’ ” he repeated. “Well, then we’re all in. Who else is left to come in?” He went to her and patted her shoulder. “I believe you were sitting up for me. Don’t you know better?”
“I might be anxious about you, such a bad night, Dan,” she said. “I don’t like to pester you, but you ought to take some regular exercise. You never have taken any; and you eat your meals just anytime you happen to get a minute or two. I do think you’ve been looking pretty run-down lately; but I wasn’t sitting up for you—not exactly, that is. I mean I was really sitting up for somebody else.”
“Who?”
She smiled apologetically. “Of course I know young people are different nowadays, and it isn’t a grandmother’s place to interfere; but I am afraid it was a mistake, your getting Henry that car.”
“You don’t mean to tell me he’s not in the house?”