The Cabots were late motoring down town, having been detained at their upper Fifth Avenue home by a domestic contretemps. The distress of it still hardened the lines of the man’s somewhat grim-featured face. Through the downward rush of many blocks, he pondered the first personal favor he had considered asking his wife in years.
“Catherine,” he said at last, “I wish you’d come with me to some toy shop and help in the selection.”
Catherine Cabot glanced into the limousine mirror, hung near the vase of her favorite yellow orchids, “to double,” as she put it, their beauty. She looked a good deal like the orchids, golden-haired, delicate of outline, fragile of texture, flower-eyed. John glanced into the mirror, too, rather than straight at her. During their ten years together he had come to prefer the reflection of his wife to the original. It was softer.
“My day is so full. John, you order any toys you like. Have them sent by special messenger.”
“You don’t get my idea, Catherine. Jack would be touched and perhaps punished more than in any other way for his outbreak this morning, if you selected a birthday present for him yourself.”
“Can’t you tell him that I did, anyhow?”
“I could, yes. But I won’t. I expected you’d suggest that lie.”
“John! I sometimes think Jackie inherited his viciousness straight from you.”
A moment the man considered this effective, if unconvincing reproach of the mother of his only child.