“We have been absent so long and I must bring the girls back to town for the winter. It is a good opportunity to put in two months there.”
“My dear mother, Mourne Lodge has got on so nicely without us for three years, it will quite safely manage to exist until July. I dislike rushing about needlessly. In an age of exclamation stops and interrogation marks, couldn’t you support me in trying to be a semicolon for a little while?”
She smiled, but refused to humour him.
“You are to come, Lawrie,” she said, getting up, “and you are to try and be nice to the girls. Perhaps if you were to forget they were sisters?” significantly.
“They will not allow me to. No one but sisters would go out of their way to be so persistently aggravating.”
“Except a brother,” with a little smile.
“Perhaps; but the brother, you must remember, is not always there from choice.”
“Well, you won’t see much of each other in Ireland, as they will be out all day with their own friends. Come, Lawrence—put up with us for a few weeks longer; your companionship will mean so much to me.”
And it was then one of those swift and sudden changes transformed his face, as it had done the face of his father, and made everything worth while. He bent down with a look of fond amusement, and kissed her forehead.
“I don’t know why in the world I went to the trouble of making up my mind not to come,” he said; “I should have saved my energy, realising that a wilful woman always has her way.”