"I tell you this fellow is out to make new figures at the Olympics," said Westenra, who had all an Irishman's madness for athletics. "This is a champion!"
At last the children were in bed, the house silent. Garry and Val sat alone by the sitting-room fire, constrained and far apart.
"They look blooming," he said. "This place suits them better than New York apparently."
(Ah! in his joy at seeing the children blooming he had not noticed her haggard face! Symptoms that in others would have aroused his professional interest in her went unnoticed, or so it seemed. She remembered that she had once heard a doctor's wife quote rather bitterly:
"Shoemakers' children have broken boots; doctors' wives never get treatment.")
"Then you will not mind our going on living here, Joe--for awhile?" she said a little wearily.
"Do you wish it?" She did not answer at once. He looked at her gravely with something pitiful in his glance.
"The children are in great trim ... but you? I don't think it is any good to you to live like this."
(He had noticed, then! It had not escaped his keen eye that she was grown old and lined! Should she tell him about her neuralgia and the terrible time she had gone through with her nerves? But how sick he must be of women with nerves.... New York was full of them .... he had just come on holiday--better wait!)
"Oh, I am all right, Garrett," she said hastily. "A little neuralgic at times----"