“You look quite nice as the father of a family,” she observed. “I wish they belonged here by right.”
“I don’t,” he answered fervently.
“I kept them up for a romp with you before they go to bed; but I am going to bundle them off now,” she said. “If you make a practice of coming home a little earlier you will have a longer time with them.”
“I shall make a practice of getting back half an hour later in future,” he returned grimly, and rose from his seat in order to shake off his tormentors.
Mrs Carruthers laughed brightly.
“Pamela will be in presently,” she said, and stooped and lifted the boy in her arms. “Tell her to come upstairs to us. She and George dine here to-night.”
She held the boy up for a good-night kiss. Carruthers very unexpectedly put his arm about her shoulders, and drew her with the boy in her arms close to him, and kissed them both. He stared after her as she went inside with the children, and then turned thoughtfully away and sat down again in his former seat.
“God forgive me for a miserable sinner!” he mused. “But I’m not cut out for a family man. Though I suppose if the little beggars really belonged here I’d get accustomed to it.”
Pamela, coming up the garden path a few minutes later, discovered him sitting there with the same lugubrious expression of face, and his hands deep in his pockets, a perplexed and very much worried man.
He rose when she came near, and went to meet her, scrutinising her with greater attentiveness than usual as she advanced, a little pale and preoccupied, but looking surprisingly pretty and sweet and composed. He detected a new quality in her manner, a certain quiet force that was restful rather than assertive, and in her wistful eyes, behind the sorrow that dwelt there lately, shone a tender gleam of happiness that had its secret springs in the realisation and support of an unselfish human love which opened for her a door that had long been closed, and let in a new light and sweetness upon her life. Carruthers supposed, unable otherwise to account for the change in her bearing, that the news of her husband’s illness had softened her, and healed the breach between them.