So she went out to the kitchen again, and looked grave as she lifted baby from his high chair, where he was perfectly happy with a saucepan lid and a tin spoon.
‘That obstreperous,’ she said, and sighed. Then she added, ‘poor man,’ under her breath.
Someway she generally sided with Larrie at such times, though she was devotedly fond of Dot.
‘I’m going to dress,’ Dot said from the door.
‘How do you propose getting there?’ He did not look at her as he spoke.
She twisted the handle. ‘Of course I had expected you would come. As it is I have sent word to mother, she is coming down in the buggy for me at seven. Mr Wooster [p 106] ]is going there for dinner, he will drive. No, mother doesn’t know; I only said you couldn’t come.’
Larrie got up and walked to the window; he could not answer her.
She looked at his big square back for a minute and the short-clipped curls on his head. Then she turned and went away to dress. Only a thin partition separated her bedroom. He heard every sound as he stood in the window, the opening and shutting of drawers, the plashing of water, her hurrying steps across the floor, the creak of the wardrobe door. Every minute he thought she would repent and come in to him, his own sweet, small wife again; then the thought became a hope, and when the wardrobe creaked the hope died, and there was almost a prayer instead. But the door opened and she came in fully dressed.
It was her wedding dress she wore, the white, trailing, exquisite silk she had knelt beside him in at the altar eighteen months ago. It was cut a little low now, and showed [p 107] ]her white, soft neck and chest; her arms were bare between the shoulder puff and glove top.
‘Larrie,’ she said with a little cry, ‘oh, let me, Larrie!’