"Good Lord, deliver us!" intoned McPherson in mingled fervour and disgust.
"I know what it is," declared Peter with sudden enlightenment. "You've just come from a wedding! That's it! I know. Women love weddings better than anything on earth. They'll talk about it for months beforehand. They'll walk miles to attend one.—And they'll weep all the rest of the day. I don't know why. But they do it. I should be grateful, I suppose, that no women were ever called upon to shed tears at my wedding. But I hope, before so very long——"
Mrs. Batholommey had not in the very least caught the drift of the laughing speech whereby he had sought to put the poor woman at her ease. And now all at once, the last sagging vestige of self-control went from her.
"Oh, Mr. Grimm!" she moaned, breaking in upon his words. "You were always so kind to us. There never was a better, kinder, gentler man in all this world than you were."
"Than I was?" asked Peter bewildered. "Is my character changing or——?"
"No, no!" she corrected herself flounderingly. "I don't mean that. I mean—I meant——"
Her gaze fluttered helplessly about the big room and chanced at last to fall upon the reading boy, asprawl on the gallery bench above them.
"I meant," she plunged along, "what would become of poor little Willem if you——?"
This time her glance was caught and transfixed by McPherson's furious glare, much as a great flopping beetle might be pierced by the sting of a wasp. Mrs. Batholommey prided herself upon her tact. That glare nerved her to another effort.
"You see," she shrilled, wildly and awkwardly clambering out of the slough, "it's fearful he had such a 'M.'"