At each new outburst of noise his thoughts kept turning back to speculations as to what might have caused this terrific upsetting of Jane. She herself would tell him presently; she always did, and he would do his best to look politely sympathetic. Perhaps her middle-aged suitor from the country had pounced on her while out walking with her new young man. He might have struck him—might have killed him. Love brought her nothing but tragedy. It seemed silly of her to continue her adventures in loving.
Crash! He spun round. The tray had slipped from Jane’s hands. In a mood of penitence she stood gaping at the wreckage. His father lowered his paper and gazed at her with an air of complete self-mastery. He was always angriest when he appeared most quiet “Go on,” he encouraged. “Stamp on them. Don’t leave anything. You can do better than that.”
“If I don’t give satisfackshun——” Jane lifted her apron and dabbed at her eyes. “If I don’t give satisfackshun——-”
Teddy heard his father strike a match and settle back into his chair. In the quiet that followed, Teddy’s thoughts returned to the channels out of which they had been diverted.
Funny! Love was the happiest thing in the world, and yet—yet it hadn’t made the people whom he knew happy.
Harriet was in love; and Hal with Vashti; and Vashti——
He remembered another sequence of people who hadn’t been made happy by love. Mrs. Sheerug hadn’t, even though she was the daughter of a Lord Mayor of London and had run away with Alonzo to get him. Mr. Hughes hadn’t, for his Henrietta had gone up in a swing-boat and had failed to come down. Most distinctly Jane hadn’t. And his mother and his father—concerning them his memories contradicted one another. Was Dearie afraid of the ladies who came to have their portraits painted? Why should she be, when Jimmie Boy was already her husband?
He shifted his nose to a new place on the window; the old place was getting wet.
And then there was Mr. Yaffon. Mr. Yaffon lived next door and seemed to sum up the entire problem in a nutshell.
His neighbors accounted for his oddities by saying that long ago he had had an unfortunate heart affair.