Did they think him capable of any harshness toward that small, gay creature in a pink dress? Well, he wasn’t. He knew, and he alone, how he felt about her.
Still, he did not mention his plan of taking them for a fine, healthful cross-country walk that afternoon, and instead he telephoned to the village for a motor car. It came promptly at half past two, but it went back again empty. Nobody cared to go out in it, because Mrs. Boles had a chill.
IV
It was nearly eight o’clock, and Hughes was suffering acutely from hunger. He walked up and down, and up and down, the library, smoking his pipe, and raging inwardly.
“Please don’t bother!” he had urged Mrs. Dexter.
And she had said: “Oh, but it’s no bother at all! Mimi and I really enjoy getting up a dainty little dinner!”
They were in the kitchen now. He could hear the egg-beater whirring, and, at intervals, their light, agreeable voices, always so good-tempered and affectionate toward each other. They had been at it for hours; they must be exhausted. Every fifteen minutes or so he had appeared in the kitchen doorway, to suggest, to plead, almost desperately:
“Look here! I wish you wouldn’t! I wish you’d come out of there! Anything will do, you know, any little simple thing—”
But they would not come out. They only laughed at him.
“I wish I could make her see how wasteful and foolish it is to give all this time and effort to a meal!” he thought. “This idea that everything must be so elaborate and ‘dainty.’ Why, good Lord! I’d rather have bread and cheese—”