They met without words, but with smiles, the unconscious smile that the morning had made.
“Well, Helen?” said he. “You look, indeed you look like the morning.”
He came close to her and with his neat precision put the primroses into her hat.
“You ought to pin them,” he said. “They will fall out.”
She laughed.
“Ah, nothing can fall out to-day,” she said. “Don’t you feel it, father? Spring, spring—and—oh, the daffodils. And I have news.”
Then her face sobered suddenly.
“Two pieces of news,” she said, smiling again, unable not to be gay. “The first is of Martin: he is engaged to be married. He asked me to tell you. Stella Plympton, whom you met here. He wrote me just a line, asking me to tell you.”
Her instinct was right to repeat that. Sharp as a knife, a father’s jealousy had pierced him. He should have been told first; whatever his disagreements with Martin, he, his father, ought to have been told first. But that passed in a moment.
“Martin?” he said, gently. “The boy?”