Only once did I venture on a word of remonstrance with my darling.
"Sweetheart," I said one day, when she had rushed into my library for some writing paper wherewith to supply the epistolary needs of the Loxley family: "I know how you are enjoying all this affair, and I wouldn't for worlds interfere with your pleasure: but don't you think that after this Play is over, you might rest from theatricals for a time?"
The pretty scarlet mouth at once grew mutinous. "Oh, Reggie, don't be a tiresome kill-joy!"
"I'm trying my best not to be," I answered meekly: "I'm not killing this joy: I'm letting it live out all its allotted days. I'm only suggesting that it shouldn't have a successor—at any rate, for the present."
Fay tossed her curly head and stamped her foot. I could read Frank's influence in every insubordinate line of her. "I think it is very horrid of you to be so dreadfully bossy, and not to let Frank and me do as we like!"
"But I do let you do as you like, my own. I didn't urge you to go abroad when you said you didn't want to go; and I have never interfered with your theatrical performances so far. You can't say I have."
But she did say it. "Yes, you have. You have looked as if you disapproved and have been terribly wet-blankety at times, and Annabel has been simply vile. Frank has noticed it too."
"I am not Annabel, nor responsible for Annabel. Heaven forbid! I can't help my looks—nobody can, or most people would—and if I look dull and what you call wet-blankety, it isn't my fault but my misfortune. And I really do try to see things from your point of view, darling: I do indeed: but I can't help my age—again, nobody can, or most people would."
Fay softened a little. She even went the length of sitting down on my knee as I sat by the fire, and twisting her fingers in my front hair. "You really aren't so bad after all—considering everything," she graciously admitted.
It seemed to me, in my masculine folly, an auspicious moment for presenting a petition to my sovereign. "If I promise to be as nice as I know how for this particular Play, and never so much as show a corner of a wet blanket, won't you give up theatricals for a bit, and turn your attention to other things? It is a pity to let anything absorb you to the exclusion of everything else." The memory of my late father's foot still constrained me to supplicate where I knew I had the right to command.