"Of course not. I was only thinking that Harry's birthday comes on Friday, and we should miss you."
"Well, I'm awfully sorry, but he'll have to grow old without me. By the way, why can't you run on with me for the first night, Virginia? Your mother can look after the babies for a couple of days, can't she?"
But the absent-minded look of young motherhood had settled again on Virginia's face, for the voice of Jenny, raised in exasperated demand, was heard from the nursery above.
"I wonder what's the matter?" she said, half rising in her chair, while she glanced nervously at the door. "She was so fretful last night, Oliver, that I'm afraid she is going to be sick. Will you keep an eye on Harry while I run up and see?"
Ten minutes later she came down again, and began, with a relieved manner, to stir her cold coffee.
"What were you saying, Oliver?" she inquired so sweetly that his irritation vanished.
"I was just asking you if you couldn't let your mother look after the youngsters for a day or two and come on with me."
"Oh, I'd give anything in the world to see it, but I couldn't possibly leave the children. I'd be so terribly anxious for fear something would happen."
"Sometimes I get in a blue funk about that play," he said seriously. "I've staked so much on it that I'll be pretty well cut up, morally and financially, if it doesn't go."
"But of course it will go, Oliver. Anybody could tell that just to read it. Didn't Mr. Martin write you that he thought it one of the strongest plays ever written in America—and I'm sure that is a great deal for a manager to say. Nobody could read a line of it without seeing that it is a work of genius."