Turning toward him she pushed gently away the confusing decorations, and removed the useless number of forks from beside his plate. If the way he ate his soup and drank his wine annoyed her, there was no hint of it in her kind eyes and her untroubled smile. She, who was sensitive to the point of delicacy, I knew, watched him crumble his bread into his green turtle, and gulp down his sherry, with a glance which apparently was oblivious of the thing at which it looked. Jessy shrank gradually away, confessing presently that she had a headache and would like to go upstairs to bed; and when she kissed President's cheek, I saw aversion written in every line of her shrinking figure. Yet opposite to him sat Sally, who was a Bland and a Fairfax, and not a tremor, not the flicker of an eyelash, disturbed her friendly and charming expression. What was the secret of that exquisite patience, that perfect courtesy, which was confirmed by the heart, not by the lips? Did the hidden cause of it lie in the fact that it was not a manner, after all, but the very essence of a character, whose ruling spirit was exhaustless sympathy?
"I've told Benjy, ma'am," said President, selecting the largest fork by some instinct for appropriateness, "that I know I oughtn't to have done it."
"To have done what?" repeated Sally kindly.
"That I oughtn't to have come in on a party like that dressed as I am, and I so plain and uneddicated."
"You mustn't worry," she answered, bending forward in all the queenliness of her braided wreath and her bare shoulders, "you mustn't worry—not for a minute. It was natural that you should come to your brother at once, and, of course, we want you to stay with us."
I had never seen her fail when social intuition guided her, and she did not fail now. He glanced down at his clothes in a pleased, yet hesitating, manner.
"These did very well on Sunday in Pocahontas," he said, "but somehow they don't seem to suit here; I reckon so many flowers and lights kind of dazzle my eyes."
"They do perfectly well," answered Sally, speaking in a firm, direct way as if she were talking to a child; "but if you would feel more comfortable in some of Ben's clothes, he has any number of them at your service. He is about your height, is he not?"
"To think of little Benjy growin' so tall," he remarked with a kind of ecstasy, and when we went into the library for a smoke, he insisted upon measuring heights with me against the ledge of the door. Then, alone with me and the cheerful crackling of the log fire, his embarrassment disappeared, and he began to ask a multitude of eager questions about myself and Jessy and my marriage.
"And so pa died," he remarked sadly, between the long whiffs of his pipe.