"I wish you would be a trifle more careful with your kindly hints, Mother! Miss Field is a most exceptional girl--"
"My DEAR boy," said the old lady, fanning rapidly, "I could get you a dozen women infinitely more capable--"
"--and I don't want her feelings hurt!" Richard finished, with a return to his usual gentleness.
"You won't hurt her feelings!" his mother predicted, roundly. "Not while the entire household is taking her orders, and the bank honouring her checks--oh, no, my dear! don't worry about that!"
"To-morrow night," Richard said, half to himself, "I shall make it a point to ask her to come down to dinner. If she prefers her room--"
"Richard," his mother said, in a low, furious tone, "if you do that, you may be kind enough to excuse me! While poor Isabelle was here, while Nina was a child, it was all well enough! But nothing could be more unfortunate for your daughter, for your young son, than to have any fresh gossip--the sort of thing people are only too ready to say, and are beginning to say now!"
"Why, how you do cook up things from whole cloth, Mother!" the man said with his indulgent smile. "You see the thing too closely, you are right in the middle of it!"
"I see that Harriet Field is an extremely pretty woman," his mother said, hotly.
Richard looked from the tip of his unlighted cigar into his mother's eyes, looked back again.
"Why, yes, I suppose she is!" he said, thoughtfully. "Gardiner said something about it just now. Said she'd make her fortune in the movies."