"What am I to do with them?" asked the unhappy woman.
Mr. Burton was an affectionate husband. He adored womankind, and sincerely bemoaned its special grievances; but he did not resist the temptation to recall his wife's announcement of five days before, so he whispered:
"Train them."
Mrs. Burton's humiliation by her own lips was postponed by a heavy footfall, which, by turning her face, she discovered was that of her brother-in-law, Tom Lawrence, who remarked:
"Tender confidences, eh? Well, I'm sorry I intruded. There's nothing like them if you want to be happy. But Helen's pretty well to-day, and dying to have her boys with her, and I'm even worse with a similar longing. You can't spare them, I suppose?"
The peculiar way in which Tom Lawrence's eyes danced as he awaited a reply would, at any other time, have roused all the defiance in Alice Burton's nature; but now, looking at the front of her beautiful dress, she only said:
"Why—I suppose—we might spare them for an hour or two!"
"You poor, dear Spartan," said Tom, with genuine sympathy, "you shall be at peace until their bedtime anyhow."
And Mrs. Burton found occasion to rearrange the bandage on her husband's face so as to whisper in his ear:
"Thank Heaven!"