Paul’s heart swelled at this unlooked-for acceptance of his plans, but the household stood in wonder.
‘What’s Paul got to go to London for?’ asked Mrs. Armstrong.
‘We’ve talked it over within the last few minutes,’ returned Armstrong. ‘The lad’s coming to discretion. He wants to see the world. I’ll find something for him to do there.’
‘William,’ said his wife, ‘you’re mad.’
Armstrong lit his pipe and said nothing, but the wife uplifted her voice and spoke.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’ve got your proper look on, as if you were half a million miles away, and me a insect, crawling about somewhere in another planet and not worthy of a thought I know your ways—I’ve got a right to know ‘em after nine-and-thirty ‘ears o’ married life, I reckon. You’ve spoke your word, and you’ll sooner die than go back on it. Another man ‘ud give some sort of a why an’ a wherefore. But you! You’re Sir Horacle, you are. You’ve opened your lips, and other folks’ talk is just no more than so many dogs a-chelpin’! What’s our Paul want to go to London for? Answer me that, if you please, William Armstrong. If it was in me, William, to be a downright vulgar woman, I’d take the poker to you.’
Armstrong looked up with his swift, dry twinkle, and she laughed. She tried to make the laugh sound angry, but the effort was useless. Armstrong twinkled again, and she burst into a peal.
‘Children,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the fringe of her shawl, ‘remember what I tell you. That’s the best man in the world, but I hope to gracious goodness as none of you will ever grow up like him. He’s enough to break the patience of a saint. If Job’d ha’ lived with him, he’d ha’ broke his head with one of his potsherds.’
Then the household laughed at large, for of late years this was the fashion—this, or something very like it—in which all combative disputes had ended. It had not always been so. In the earlier years, which Paul could well remember, before the gray little man had achieved his triumph of speechless mastery, there had been scenes which bordered on the terrible.
‘And now,’ said Mrs. Armstrong, ‘what’s our Paul to go to London for?’