There were various lesser worries, not of sufficient importance to disturb seriously the equanimity of a busy and well-balanced man, and though each was trivial enough in itself, and distinctly had a humorous side to a mind otherwise content, the cumulative effect of them was not amusing. In the first place, there was the affair of Harry Ames, who, in a manner sufficiently ludicrous and calfish, had been making love to his wife. As any other sensible man would have done, Wilfred Evans had seen almost immediately on his return to Riseborough that Harry was disposed to make himself ridiculous, and had given a word of kindly warning to his wife.
“Snub him a bit, little woman,” he had said. “We’re having a little too much of him. It’s fairer on the boy, too. You’re too kind to him. A woman like you so easily turns a boy’s head. And you’ve often said he is rather a dreadful sort of youth.”
But for some reason she took the words in ill part, becoming rather precise.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Will you explain, please?”
“Easy enough, my dear. He’s here too much; he’s dangling after you. Laugh at him a little, or yawn a little.”
“You mean that he’s in love with me?”
“Well, that’s too big a word, little woman, though I’m sure you see what I mean.”
“I think I do. I think your suggestion is rather coarse, Wilfred, and quite ill-founded. Is every one who is polite and attentive supposed to be in love with me? I only ask for information.”
“I think your own good sense will supply you with all necessary information,” he said.
But her good sense apparently had done nothing of the kind, and eventually Dr. Evans had spoken to Harry’s father on the subject. The visits had ceased with amazing abruptness after that, and Dr. Evans had found himself treated to a stare of blank unrecognition when he passed Harry in the street, and a curl of the lip which he felt must have been practised in private. But the Omar Khayyam Club would be the gainers, for they owed to it those stricken and embittered stanzas called “Parted.”