"Oh, Walter! Can't you have Peters drive you to The Towers after he takes me to Sunbury?"
"I have an engagement with Robert Kimberly at eleven o'clock."
"Could you change it a little, do you think, Walter?"
"An engagement with Robert Kimberly!"
"Or be just a little late for it?"
MacBirney used his opportunity to advantage. "Keep him waiting! Alice, when you get an idea into your head about going to church you lose your common-sense."
She turned to the window to look at the sky. "I can't walk," she said hopelessly. Her husband made no comment. As her eyes turned toward the distant Towers she remembered that Robert Kimberly the evening before had asked--and so insistently that it had been one of the causes of her wakefulness--for permission to bring over in the morning some grapes from his hot-houses. He had wanted to come at eleven o'clock and she had assured him she should not be at home--this because, during some uneasy moments when they were close together in the car, she had resolved that the next morning she should seek if only for an hour an influence long neglected but quite removed from his. It was clear to her as she now stood at the window, that Kimberly had sought every chance to be at her personal service at eleven o'clock, even though her husband professed an engagement with him.
"Couldn't Peters," she asked, turning again to MacBirney, "drive me down half an hour earlier--before you go? I can wait at the church till he comes back after me?"
MacBirney was reading the stock-market reports in the morning paper. "All right," he said curtly.
She was contained this time. There had been occasions when scenes such as this had brought hot tears, but five years of steady battering had fairly subdued Alice.