Madden seemed pleased. “Whether it is or not, it’s a good one,” he said. Very sure of himself, he stood by Mary and handed tea-cups around.
Of all of them the tea-pot seemed to be the only one that expected anything of the gathering. The others subsided and waited for the tea-pot to make a remark that would start things going. Blake looked at it almost hopefully, it was so authoritative. What would it say? Being a member of the family, it had a good deal of license. Being of an aristocratic and expensive shape, it would doubtless waive its right, like Mary, and remain as composed and silent as Mary herself. This is just what it did.
Under his own half-developed sense of responsibility Blake squirmed. It was all his fault. If he had not been here, the tea party would have been an informal pleasant thing. If he had been in his own room studying Latin or looking out of the window at the reluctant New England spring, Mary and Bob would even now be talking smoothly, worrying about nothing at all. If he had not been here, gripping his cup with an angry defiance, Teddy Madden would have been free to go back into the corner and read. Instead, here they all sat, looking at each other.
Bob cleared his throat and said loudly, “Well, Blake, what was it all about? Tell us what crime you committed. We’re waiting.”
Mary looked distressed, but said nothing.
“I guess Dr. Miller wrote as much as I could tell you,” said Blake.
“He wrote, of course, darling,” said Mary. “He has a way of obscuring things. We just couldn’t make it out at all.”
“He writes an extraordinary letter,” added Bob. “Extraordinary. Wasn’t it, Ted?”
“Absolutely,” said Madden. Blake was suddenly furious that Madden had seen it. What business was it of Madden’s? What had his mother been thinking of?
There were little pin-scratches on the wood of his chair. Some of them formed designs; just next to his hand on the right chair-arm was a lopsided fleur-de-lys. But the design in the cloth of his trousers was different; eyed closely, it had the appearance of a family of brown triangles turning their backs with one accord on another family of tan triangles....