He stirred uneasily, for like most men of twenty-one, he had a horror of sentiment.
"Oh, well, you may come over next summer, you know. I'll speak to father about it. If his play goes over to London, he'll have to be there, won't he?"
"I suppose so," she replied, choking down her tears, and becoming suddenly cheerful. "And you'll write to me once a week, Harry?"
"You bet! By the way, I've had nothing to eat since ten o'clock, and I feel rather gone. Have you some cake around anywhere?"
"But we'll have supper in half an hour, and I've ordered waffles and fried chicken for you. Hadn't you better wait?"
Her cheerfulness was not assumed now, for with the turn to practical matters, she felt suddenly that the universe had righted itself. Even Harry's departure was forgotten in the immediate necessity of providing for his appetite.
"Well, I'll wait, but I hope you've prepared for an army. I could eat a hundred waffles."
He snapped his jaws, and she laughed delightedly. For all his twenty-one years, and the scholarship which he had won so easily and which was taking him abroad, he was as boyish and as natural as he had been at ten. Even his love of sweets had not lessened with the increase of his dignity. To think of his demanding cake the minute after he had entered the house!
"Father's play made a great hit," he said presently, still steering carefully away from the reefs of emotion. "I suppose you read all about it in the papers?"
She shook her head, smiling. Though she tried her best to be as natural and as unemotional as he was, she could not keep her adoration out of her eyes, which feasted on him like the eyes of one who had starved for months. How handsome he was, with his broad shoulders, his fine sunburned face, and his frank, boyish smile. It was a pity he had to wear glasses—yet even his glasses seemed to her individual and charming. She couldn't imagine a single way in which he could be improved, and all the while she was perfectly sure that it wasn't in the least because she was his mother—that she wasn't a bit prejudiced in her judgment. It appeared out of the question that anybody—even a stranger—could have found fault with him. "No, I haven't had time to read the papers—I've been so busy getting ready for Lucy's wedding," she answered. "But your father told me about it. It must be splendid—only I wish he wouldn't speak so contemptuously of it," she added regretfully. "He says it's trash, and yet I'm sure everybody spoke well of it, and they say it is obliged to make a great deal of money. I can't understand why his success seems to irritate rather than please him."