“Very nearly, thank goodness.”
“That’s a mercy. I should certainly have been here yesterday to help you in superintending and arranging and so on, but I was suffering from one of my ‘hearts,’ and you know what they are.”
Everyone who knew Mrs. Corcoran Dunn was acquainted with her “hearts.” The attacks came, so she was accustomed to explain, from an impaired valve, and “some day”—she usually completed the sentence with upturned eyes and a resigned upward wave of the hand.
Her son turned from the window.
“I say, Mother,” he explained, wearily, “I do wish you wouldn’t speak of your vital organs in the plural. Anyone would imagine you were a sort of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus. It’s positively distressing.”
Stephen laughed. He admired young Dunn immensely. Mrs. Dunn sighed.
“Don’t, Malcolm, dear,” she pleaded. “You sound so unfeeling. One not acquainted with your real kindness of heart—”
“Oh, drop it,” interrupted Malcolm. “Let’s omit the heart interest. This isn’t a clinic. I say, Steve, how do you like the new flat? It is a flat, isn’t it?”
Stephen turned red. His sister colored and bit her lip. Mrs. Dunn hastened to the rescue.
“Horrors!” she exclaimed. “Malcolm, you really are insufferable. Flat! Caroline, dear, you mustn’t mind him. He will have his joke. Malcolm, apologize.”