“You’ve come!” she said fondly, “I knew you would. That’s my boy. I knew you’d come when your mother asked you.”
“Yes, I’ve come,” he said slowly, and looking down as if desiring to avoid her eyes. “Yes, I’ve come, but——”
He stopped.
His mother’s glance fell from his face to his figure and saw under the loose fronts of his overcoat that he wore his business suit. Her countenance instantly, with almost electric suddenness, stiffened into antagonism. Her eye lost its love, and hardened into a stony look of defiant indignation. She pulled her hand from his and jerked back the front of his coat with it.
“What’s this mean?” she said sharply. “Why aren’t you dressed? The people will be here in a minute. You can’t come this way.”
“I was going home to dress,” he said. “I am not sure yet that I can come.”
“Why?” she demanded.
His face grew red. The mission on which he had come was more difficult, more detestable, than he had supposed it would be. He looked down at the shining strip of floor between them and said, trying to make his voice sound easy and plausible:
“I came to ask you for an invitation for Berny.”
“Hah!” said his mother, expelling her breath in an angry ejaculation of confirmed suspicion. “That’s it, is it? I thought as much!”