“Oh, Antony doesn’t mind, dear,” he said cheerfully. “We do worse things than this at the office—eh, Antony?”
“That we do, Mr Hallett,” I cried, laughing.
“Yes,” said Mrs Hallett, “at the office. Ah, well, I suppose it is of no use to complain.”
She complained all the same, at everything, while Mr Hallett bore it with a most patient manner that set me wondering. He was never once irritable, but took every murmur in a quiet, resigned way, evidently excusing it on the score of his mother’s sufferings.
Then he got out a book to read to her, but it would not do. Then another and another one, supposed to be her favourite authors; but nothing would do but Dodd’s “Thoughts in Prison,” and the reading of this cheerful volume went on till Linny came back, as I noticed, looking hot and flushed, as if she had been hurrying; and she glanced, as I thought, suspiciously at me, her brother not raising his eyes from his reading.
Then followed tea, and a walk with Mr Hallett, and after that supper, when he walked part of the way home with me.
“Good-night, Antony,” he said. “I hope you have not found your visit too gloomy an one to care to come again.”
“Will you ask me again?” I said eagerly.
“To be sure. My poor mother is a little fretful, as you saw; but she has been an invalid now these seventeen years, and she misses some of the comforts of the past. Good-night, my boy.”
“Good-night, Mr Hallett;” and we parted—he to walk slowly away, bent of head and serious, and I to begin thinking of his unwearying patience and devotion to his invalid mother: after which I recalled a great deal about Linny Hallett, and how pretty and petulant she seemed, wondering at the same time that neither mother nor brother took any notice of her flushed and excited look as she came in from church.