With a laughing nod she turned from him, and following the little path entered the house under the honeysuckle arbour on the back porch.
CHAPTER IV
Shows That A Laugh Does Not Heal A Heartache
WHEN Emily entered the dining-room, she found that Beverly had departed from his usual custom sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast.
"I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear," he remarked, "and I think it was due entirely to the heavy supper you insisted upon giving us."
"But, Beverly, we must have hot things now," said Emily, as she arranged the crocheted centrepiece upon the table. "Mr. Smith is our boarder, you know, not our guest."
"The fact that he is a boarder," commented Beverly, with dignity, "entirely relieves me of any feeling of responsibility upon his account. If he were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as you do that hot suppers are a necessity, but when a man pays for the meals he eats, we are no longer under an obligation to consider his preferences."
"His presence in the household is a great trial to us all," observed his wife, whose attitude of general acceptance was modified by the fact that she accepted everything for the worst. Her sense of tragic values had been long since obliterated by a gray wash of melancholy that covered all.
"Well, I don't see that he is very zealous about interfering with us," remarked Emily, almost indignantly, "he doesn't appear to be of a particularly sociable disposition."
"Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depressing," rejoined Mrs. Brooke. "It's a pity, perhaps, that we couldn't have secured a blond person—they are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and I remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie Colton's, when I called there once, was exceedingly lively and entertaining. But it's too late, of course, to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his morals, at least, are above reproach."
As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been made by Mrs. Brooke herself upon the day that Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for the fifth time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped lightly upon her tongue; but restraining her words with an effort, she observed cheerfully an instant later that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no inconvenience to the family.