“Indeed!” said Mrs. Mar, beginning slowly to rock again, “and what’s he coming for this time?”
“Perhaps, as Hildegarde is fantastic enough to think, he may be coming to see me,” Mar answered.
His wife’s laugh had a tang of shrewdness. “You’ll find he has business of some sort to attend to in California, if he does come!”
“Just now you were complaining that he didn’t attend to business anywhere.”
“My complaint—no, my regret—is, that gratitude isn’t in the Galbraith blood.”
“You have no good reason for saying that.” He spoke with uncommon emphasis.
But Mrs. Mar’s spirit rose to meet him. “I have the excellent reason that I know enough about the father as well as the son to form an opinion. I don’t forget how your ‘greatest friend’ died, leaving you his executor and leaving you nothing else. Not a penny piece out of all that money.”
“I don’t see why my friends should leave me money—”
“No, nor why you should get it any other way! Don’t let me hurry you, Hildegarde, but if you’ve quite finished mooning about in the corner there, I’d like to mention that it’s exactly twelve and a half minutes since I called you in to your German, and there’s the Missionary Society at half past four, and choir practice at seven, and before we can turn round Mrs. Cox will be here about electing the new secretary to the Shakspere Club, and if I’d known you were going to squander my time like this I’d have stopped to make Harry his last Washington pie before—”