“Not on your life!” said Gilbert. “I’m not nineteen, old girl!”
He took a bill from his pocket.
“See if you and Edna can’t find some place to buy yourselves a box of caramels,” he said. “I want a look at the papers.”
“I shouldn’t object to a walk,” said Mr. MacGregor.
“Then I’ll show you a nice, cool, after-dinner one,” said Claudine, brightly, “while the girls go for their candy. Run up and get me my sunshade, please, Edna!”
Gilbert looked up with a scowl; but he met so cold and steadfast a glance from his wife that he looked down again. Better let her alone; she was capable of the most alarming retaliations. Anyhow, she couldn’t do any real harm; love was not to be so easily discouraged. He pretended to be deep in his papers, but he was none the less well aware of his daughters going off in one direction and his wife and Mr. MacGregor in another. He was ready to laugh at the woman’s folly.
Claudine had started with the firm intention of approaching and utterly routing Mr. MacGregor. But, to be brief, she didn’t so much as mention Andrée’s name. She couldn’t! Instead they chatted affably as they strolled; Mr. MacGregor gave some information, more sentimental than scientific, regarding Scotch wild flowers. He was really very nice and flattering. She hadn’t for years met anyone who took so frank an interest in her. He was by no means a botanist, but he confessed to a love of Nature, and he admired her quite extensive knowledge. Moreover, he too was a reader of her beloved philosophers, and they had an interesting if somewhat superficial discussion of their theories of life. Claudine’s idea was that one should try to deny the reality of suffering; she had a pitiful hope that if she were to train her reason sufficiently she would in time be able to reason away her unhappiness. Mr. MacGregor, on the contrary, had a tinge of Calvinism in his philosophy, he thought it better to hug one’s pain, to rejoice in its cruel embrace, to be made strong by it.
Then they talked a little of music, Claudine’s old love. But Mr. MacGregor was so very practical. He looked upon a masterwork as a thing to be expressed through high technical perfection, he read no meanings, no sentiment into music, he had none of Claudine’s mystic delight in sound itself.
They both became mollified. Mr. MacGregor was able to forgive this charming and interesting woman her obvious interference in his love-making, and she was willing to admit that as a man he was strong, sensible, and rather likeable. She couldn’t help contrasting his ruggedness, his well-furnished mind, his varied interests, with the bilious and tiresome Gilbert. Here was a companion, who could walk, and who could talk.
They came leisurely home; Gilbert saw them crossing the sunny lawn, both of them annoyingly cool in spite of the midsummer weather. He himself was quite wretched from the heat, and irritated by the newspaper. He got up and went to meet them.