The shop windows, particularly those displaying men's shirtings, enchanted him; and he stopped a moment before each one, while she yielded as obligingly as she might have yielded to a fancy of Archibald's, though she was aware that her son would have scorned to look into a window.
"It's so seldom I get out on the Avenue, that's why I like it, I suppose," he remarked while they were surveying a festive arrangement of pink madras.
She smiled up at him, and her smile, gay as it was, held a touch of maternal solicitude. Notwithstanding his bigness and his success and his forty-five years, there was something appealingly boyish about him.
"It would be so easy to get out, wouldn't it?" she asked as they walked on again.
"Well, there ain't much fun when you are by yourself."
"But you know plenty of people."
"Oh, yes, I know people enough in a business way, but that don't mean having friends, does it? Of course, I've men friends scattered everywhere," he added. "The West is full of 'em, but it's funny when you come to think of it—" He broke off, hesitated an instant, and then went on again: "It's funny, but I don't believe. I ever had a woman friend in my life—I mean a friend who wasn't just the wife of some man I knew in business."
The confession touched her, and she answered impulsively: "Well, that's just what I want to be to you—a good friend."
He laughed, but his eyes shone as he looked down on her. "If you'd only take the trouble."
"It won't be any trouble—not a bit of it. After your goodness to me, how could I help being your friend?"