“But,” Mrs. Blair interrupted, as if he were wholly missing the point, “ministers’ families always have a standing, I think.”
They were silent, then, until Mrs. Blair began:
“I suppose I really ought to call on Mrs. Marley.”
“Why?”
“Well, it seems, you know—it seems to me that I ought.”
“But wouldn’t that—?”
“I considered that, and still, it might seem more so if I didn’t, don’t you see?”
The judge tried to grasp the attenuated point, and expressed his failure in the sigh with which he stooped to fasten his shoes. Then he drew on his alpaca coat, and just as he was leaving the room, his wife stopped him with:
“But, Will!”
He halted with his hand on the door-knob. For an instant his wife looked at him in pleasure. He was rather handsome, with his white hair combed gravely, his ruddy face fresh from his shaving, and his stiff, white collar about his neck.