"—and none of us are being troubled through relations by marriage."
The door was shut, but the penetrating voice of Ann Wilde came through it clearly, and Walworth winced.
"Oh, dear, no!" he protested.
"I should say not," chimed in Freddy Pratt, with his self-satisfied little ba-a.
The cigars were ending. "Come, let us go out to the others," said Floyd.
In the drawing-room Ogden presently encountered Jessie Bradley and her parents. The girl herself appeared as dressed as the occasion could warrant, but her father and mother wore the every-day habiliments in which he had first seen them, a fortnight before, on the occasion of a call at Hinsdale. They had an easy-going aspect, as if they hardly cared to put themselves out greatly. They were present in the triple capacity of relatives of the hostess, of suburbanites, and of body-guard to escort their daughter back home after another of her frequent visits in town, and their effect was quite provisional and transitory.
Mrs. Bradley was a pleasant woman whose face was full of the fine lines of experience and whose hair had thinned greatly without changing its dry, sandy brown. She wore an old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb. She met Ogden here precisely as she had met him in her own house. He noticed presently that she treated everybody else in exactly the same fashion, and he learned subsequently that she had, practically, one invariable manner for all times, places, and people. It was a manner that he found very quiet, simple, straightforward, and friendly. It showed that she valued herself, and was also disposed to accord a good value to anybody else. It seemed to say, as plainly as words: "The Lord is the maker of us all; so let's have no more fuss about it." It was the good American manner in full bloom.
Her husband had a jovial eye, a grizzled moustache, a rotund, polished forehead, and cheeks that hung downward fatly into his big, round, short neck. He appeared to have valued his peace of mind sufficiently to preserve it and to be satisfied with the moderate success that comes from moderate effort. He wore a short-waisted, double-breasted frock coat, and there were no wrinkles in it, either front or back: he would have found it impossible to thrust his plump hand in between any two of the buttons.
He was given in the directory as "Bradley, Danl. H., secty. and treas. Darrell & Bradley P't'g & Lith'g Co." He had been one of the organizers of the corporation, but had since yielded the lead to others of more push and means. He had a moderate salary and a small block of the stock. Since he was assisting the business as an officer, rather than directing it as an individual, he had little personal annoyance from typographical unions and from the paper manufacturers' trusts. As for "pi" and proof-readers' errors, matters which have a power to make some men agonize, he merely laughed at them. The concern, besides its central establishment, had a few retail branches placed here and there through the business district; one of them, on the ground floor of the Clifton, supplied the La Salle Street banks and insurance offices with ledgers, ink, and blotting-pads.
He had an acre of ground and a two-story frame house at Hinsdale, and Ogden remembered the small green-house where he fed his craze for chrysanthemums.