“Don’t think of it!” cried Sullivan. “I understand perfectly, and wouldn’t allow you to disturb him for the world. Just let me slip in quietly, and when he has finished, perhaps he will join us. I do want to know your husband better, Mrs. Dilling, but it’s quite impossible to form any intimate contacts up there on the Hill, and in the midst of the turmoil of our every-day existence. I won’t say any more, however, through the medium of this unsatisfactory instrument. I will be with you in a moment.”
He was. Before Marjorie had decided whether or not it was The Thing to entertain a Member of Parliament in the dining-room (where the table was set for breakfast) she was summoned to the door by a discreet tinkle of the bell.
Although his enormous bulk nearly filled the tiny passage, Sullivan’s handclasp was very gentle and his voice was low.
“No words, Mrs. Dilling, can convey to you my gratitude for this privilege! I am a lonely man, a shy man for all my huge body, and I do not readily make friends!”
The house seemed to quiver as he followed her to the dining-room, and Marjorie was distressed at her failure to regain her composure and to still the strange quaking within herself. She had never been affected like this, before.
“What a cosy little nest!” exclaimed her guest. “And are there three birdlings?”
His fine brown eyes turned from the children’s places—where neat oilcloth bibs and porridge bowls stood ready for the morning—back to her face.
“Yes, we have three children—two girls and a boy.”
“Wonderful little woman,” he breathed, reverently, “and she’s only a slip of a girl, herself.”
“I’m twenty-seven,” declared Marjorie.