“Very pretty,” Desire said, not knowing it had been purchased, “but a little too expensive. Thank you for your trouble.”
At dinner, long after the store had closed, he told her.
“But I can’t accept things from you like that. It’s very sweet of you, but the suit’ll go back to-morrow. Even if I were willing, mother wouldn’t allow it.”
But Vashti only smiled. She was giving him his chance. It pleased her to regard them as children.
“Of course it isn’t the thing to do, but if it gives Teddy pleasure——”
So when the suit came home it was not returned. When she met him in the day time she invariably wore it He knew that her motive was to make him happy. The little tweed suit gave him an absurd sense of warmth about the heart whenever he thought of it. It was another bond between them.
“I wonder whether my fattier was at all like you—whether he was always buying things for my beautiful mother. It is strange to have a father and to know so little of him. You’re the only person, Meester Deek, I ever talk to about him. That’s a compliment. D’you think——” she hesitated, “don’t you think some day you and I might bring them together?”
It became one of the secret dreams they shared. He told her about the letter he had written to Hal and never sent.
“Don’t you ever mention me to your father and mother?”
It was an awkward question.