It was more than too much. Obviously his wife considered him shifty and unreliable, and his child thought of him only as a blithering ninny only to be ordered about. Well, in that case, he knew what to do about it. He started the car, backed down the drive and started down the street.
The Hickentrope Hotel was the sort of establishment where the management was not chary of guests without luggage. Lester sat in one of the Hickentrope's uninspiring rooms, stared at the puce colored walls and thought dark thoughts, until it was time to turn out the lights, stare at the darkened walls and think puce thoughts.
He blamed himself somewhat for having left Ginny alone when she'd only barely risen from her sick bed, but swift on the heels of this recrimination came the thought that if she wasn't able to manage properly, A.P. would be only too happy to tell her how. Besides, she could always telephone her mother, even though Mrs. Feeney had sworn, on the day of their wedding, never to enter her daughter's house. Finally, Lester began to speculate on the probable consequences should A.P. and Mrs. Feeney be brought together under the same roof and, with the picture of this happy disaster in mind, he eventually dozed off.
In the morning, after the first barber's shave he had ever experienced, Lester made his way to the bank. He was dreary-eyed and low in his mind, but he managed to withstand the ironical congratulations of his co-workers with a fixed and aching grin. When Mr. Painter, the bank manager, asked him bluffly about the new heir, he had half a notion to tell him just to see the silly smile wilt from his vapid face.
Lester retired soberly to his window, arranged his cash drawer and got down to business. It was nearly noon, in the midst of the deposits of a neighborhood bakery shop, that Miss Sward, Mr. Painter's secretary, appeared at his shoulder to tell him that his wife was on the telephone and wished to speak to him on a matter of urgency.
With a feeling of triumph that Ginny had capitulated so rapidly and so easily, he completed the bakery's deposits, closed his window and made his way back to the office and the telephone. Keeping his tone distant but nonetheless magnanimous, he said hello.
"Lester!" Ginny's voice came tartly over the wire, "Who are all those people?"
This was not precisely the approach Lester had anticipated. For a moment he was taken aback.
"What people?" he asked finally.