Lydia’s two or three big receptions, of which her mother had spoken with so casual a confidence, came off, while not exactly with nonchalant ease, still, on the whole, creditably. It is true that Dr. Melton had stormed at Lydia one sunny day in spring, finding her bent over her desk, addressing invitations.
“It’s April, child!” he cried, “April! The crocuses are out and the violets are almost here—and, what is more important, your day of trial gets closer with every tick of the clock. Come outdoors and take a walk with me.”
“Oh, I can’t!” Lydia was aghast at the idea, looking at a mountain of envelopes before her.
“Here! I’ll help you finish those, and then we’ll—”
“No, no, no!” In Lydia’s negation was a touch of the irritation that was often during these days in her attitude toward her godfather. “I can’t! Please don’t tease me to! The curtains to the spare room have to be put up, and the bed draperies somehow fixed. A stray dog got in there when he was wet and muddy and went to sleep on my best lace bedspread.”
Dr. Melton had not practiced for years among Endbury ladies without having some knowledge of them and a corresponding readiness of mind in meeting the difficulties they declared insurmountable. “I’ll buy you a white marseilles bedspread on our way back from the walk,” he offered gravely.
“Oh, I’ve got plenty of plain white ones,” she admitted incautiously, “but they don’t go with the scheme of the room—and the first reception’s only two days off.”
Dr. Melton fixed her with an ironical and melancholy smile: “Now, Lydia, I did think you had it in you to realize that your health and the strength of your child are worth more than—”
Lydia sprang up and confronted him with an apparent anger of face and accent that was contradicted by her trembling chin and suffused eyes. “Oh, go away!” she commanded him, shaking her head and motioning him off. “Don’t talk so to me! I can’t help it—what I do! Everything’s a part of the whole system, and I’m in that up to my neck—you know I am. If that’s right, why, everything’s all right, just the way everybody thinks it is. And if it’s wrong—” She caught her breath, and turned back to her desk. “If it’s wrong, what good would be done by little dribbling compromises of an occasional walk.” She sat down wearily, and leaned her head on her hand. “I just wish you wouldn’t keep me so stirred up—when I’m trying so hard to settle down!”
Dr. Melton seemed to divine perfectly the significance of this incoherent outbreak. He thrust out his lips in his old grimace that denoted emotion, and observed the speaker in a frowning silence. When she finished, he nodded: “You are right, Lydia, I do no good.” He twirled his hat about between his fingers, looking absently into the crown, and added, “But you must forgive me, I love you very dearly.”