“That is the worst risk of the two. I have seen great harm done in that way. Mention it, but without seeming to make too much of it.”
“Won’t you, papa?”
“You had better—it will seem of less importance. I think nothing of it myself.”
Nevertheless, Ethel saw that he could not trust himself to broach the subject to Margaret.
“How was the Larkins’ baby?”
“Doing better. What have you done with Spencer?”
“I put him into Richard’s room. The children were eating him up! He is so kind to them.”
“Ay! I say, Ethel, that was a happy consequence of your coming home with me.”
“What a delightful person he is!”
“Is he not? A true knight errant, as he always was! I could not tell you what I owed to him as a boy—all my life, I may say. Ethel,” he added suddenly: “we must do our best to make him happy here. I know it now—I never guessed it then, but one is very hard and selfish when one is happy—”