“I do want this paper to be a success; that is why I strum upon the piano to please Clodd. Is it humbug?”
“I am afraid it is; but humbug is the sweet oil that helps this whirling world of ours to spin round smoothly. Too much of it cloys: we drop it very gently.”
“But you are sure it is only humbug, Tommy?” It was Peter’s voice into which fear had entered now. “It is not that you think he understands you better than I do—would do more for you?”
“You want me to tell you all I think of you, and that isn’t good for you, dad—not too often. It would be you who would have swelled head then.”
“I am jealous, Tommy, jealous of everyone that comes near you. Life is a tragedy for us old folks. We know there must come a day when you will leave the nest, leave us voiceless, ridiculous, flitting among bare branches. You will understand later, when you have children of your own. This foolish talk about a husband! It is worse for a man than it is for the woman. The mother lives again in her child: the man is robbed of all.”
“Dad, do you know how old I am?—that you are talking terrible nonsense?”
“He will come, little girl.”
“Yes,” answered Tommy, “I suppose he will; but not for a long while—oh, not for a very long while. Don’t. It frightens me.”
“You? Why should it frighten you?”
“The pain. It makes me feel a coward. I want it to come; I want to taste life, to drain the whole cup, to understand, to feel. But that is the boy in me. I am more than half a boy, I always have been. But the woman in me: it shrinks from the ordeal.”