"I never should have known you, Mrs. Walbridge." She laughed and bade him sit down.
"I know," she said, "Paul hardly did know me as I got out of the cab, did you, Paul?"
"No," the young man answered, "I was never so surprised in my life."
"It is all Oliver's doing," she went on, as she began her interrupted dinner. "He would have it. Wait till you see some of the things he has bought me, Maud! He went to all the dressmakers with me, and was so fussy about my hats that I nearly threw them in his face." But her smile at the young man across the table was a very loving one.
He beamed back at her in a way that struck the new-comer as being enviable. He himself felt suddenly very old, very isolated. Violet Walbridge's husband had been a dismal failure, and her children were selfish, and spoilt, and not one of them, he had always thought, really appreciated her, but here was this queer journalistic young man whose odd gifts were certainly more than intelligence and might easily be the youthful growth of genius, plainly loving and understanding her like the most perfect of sons. Barclay envied her.
"I did," Oliver was saying. "With my own hand I did it. With my little bow and arrow I killed cock sparrow of British clothes and unselfish indifference! Wait till you see the evening dress we got. My word! And there's a tea-gown. We had a most unseemly scene over that tea-gown; nearly came to blows, didn't we, petite mère?"
She laughed. "I shall never dare wear it; it's the most unrespectable looking garment. I only got it to make him stop talking." She went on, turning to Griselda. "He talked the two saleswomen nearly into collapse, and the premier vendeuse went and got Madame Carlier herself. His words flowed, and flowed, like a dreadful, devastating river, and they were all nearly drowned."
"So you got the tea-gown as a plank to save them," Oliver grinned. "Some day when we are married, Grisel"—Grisel, started violently, and after a momentary pause, during which he bit his lip, he went on in an injured voice, "What is the matter? Aren't you going to be married? I certainly am! I was going to say, when we are all married I can tell my wife about our dreadful scenes in the lingerie shop and chez la corsetière. Oh, la, la!"
"Oh, la, la."