“My dear,” said Mrs. Wells, “where have you been? Writing letters? I do hope you have jotted a few postcards for me. I have been shamefully lazy. Where is Richard? I owe him an apology. He was talking away beautifully, giving me all sorts of little thrills with his absurd poetical views, and I only closed my eyes so that I could hear better—I did take a teeny nap, but don’t ever tell the dear boy—when, pop! he was off without my hearing a sound.”
Geraldine stacked the remains of the dinner in a pile near the rail, convenient for the approaching deck steward.
“It was so comfortable up here this evening,” the mother explained, for fear she might be accused of weakness, “that I just had the steward bring me a bite. The dining-room is abominably stuffy.”
“You are much better, mother, aren’t you?”
“Better?” She looked up sharply. “You talk as if I had been ill. Nothing is the matter with me. I get tired—the same as others, sitting around on this boat with nothing to do but stumble over steamer-chairs. What made you think anything was the matter?”
Geraldine was expert enough in signs to know that this topic had better be dropped, so she began on a new line.
“Have you seen Walter this afternoon?” Geraldine asked casually.
Mrs. Wells knew she was under cross-examination. Perhaps it was clairvoyance; undoubtedly she had a kind of ability in reading the intentions of others that amounted almost to mind-reading; but more likely it was the consciousness of guilt that led her to avoid this topic too. But she was unusually clumsy. She fussed with her pillows, asked why the steward did not remove the tea-cup and plate, and, finally, when Geraldine, with calm persistence, came back to Walter, Mrs. Wells pretended at first she had not heard, and then asked petulantly, “Yes, I have talked with him. Why shouldn’t his mother talk with him?”
“Do you think he is any better?”
“Oh, he’s coming along as well as I expected.... Aren’t those sunset clouds wonderful?”