“Thank you,” he answered.
“I’ve just been saying,” with renewed spirit of admiration, “that your crossing with that Latimer has quite brought him into notice. It will be a good thing for him. I heard several people speak of him to-night and say how kind it was of you to take him up.”
Baird stirred uneasily.
“I should not like to have that tone taken,” he said. “Why should I patronise him? We shall be friends—if he will allow it.” He spoke with so much heat and impatience that Mrs. Stornaway listened with a discomfited stare.
“But nobody knows anything about them,” she said. “They’re quite ordinary people. They live in Bank Street.”
“That may settle the matter for Willowfield,” said Baird, “but it does not settle it for me. We are to be friends, and Willowfield must understand that.”
And such was the decision of his tone that Mrs. Stornaway did not recover herself and was still staring after him in a bewildered fashion when he went upstairs.
“But it’s just like him,” she remarked, rather weakly to the room’s emptiness. “That’s always the way with people of genius and—and—mind. They’re always humble.”