On this dark November evening she was so tired that every inch of her soft plumpness ached. She had not prospered in her shopping. Things had not matched. She let herself into the front door with a sigh of relief at finding the hall empty. She looked cautiously into the doctor’s study and drew a long breath, peeped into the parlor and, almost smiling, went on cheerfully upstairs to her room. From afar, she saw the welcoming flicker of the coal fire in her grate, and felt a glow of surprised gratitude to the latest transient from the employment agency who was now occupying her kitchen. She did not often get one that was thoughtful about keeping up fires when nobody was at home. It would be delicious to get off her corset and shoes, let down her hair—there he was, bolt upright before the fire, his back to the door. She took in the significance of his tense attitude and prepared herself for the worst, sinking into a chair, letting her bundles slide at various tangents from her rounded surface, and surveying her brother with the utmost unresignation. “Well, what is it now?” she asked.
He had not heard her enter, and now flashed around, casting in her face like a hard-thrown missile, “Lydia’s engaged.”
All Mrs. Sandworth’s lassitude vanished. She flung herself on him in a wild outcry of inquiry—“Which one? Which one?”
He answered her angrily, “Which do you suppose? Doesn’t a steam-roller make some impression on a rose?”
“Oh!” she cried, enlightened; and then, with widespread solemnity, “Well, think—of—that!”
“Not if I can help it,” groaned the doctor.
“But that’s not fair,” his sister protested a moment later as she took in the rest of his speech.
“Heaven knows it’s not,” he agreed bitterly.
She stared. “I mean that Paul hasn’t been nearly so steam-rollery as usual.”
The doctor rubbed his face furiously, as though to brush off a disagreeable clinging web. “He hasn’t had to be. There have been plenty of other forces to do his rolling for him.”