"From the day his mother died, Mrs. Coppered, my dear, when poor little Master Duncan wasn't but three weeks old, I don't believe he and his father were separated an hour when they could be together! Mr. Coppered would take that little owl-faced baby downstairs with him when he came in before dinner, and 'way into the night they'd be in the library together, the baby laughing and crowing, or asleep on a pillow on the sofa. Why, the boy wasn't four when he let the nurse go, and carried the child off for a month's fishing in Canada! And when we first knew that the hip was bad, Mr. Coppered gave up his business and for five years in Europe he never let Master Duncan out of his sight. The games and the books—I should say the child had a million lead soldiers! The first thing in the morning it'd be, 'Is Dad awake, Paul?' and he running into the room; and at noon, coming back from his ride, 'Is Dad home?' Wonderful to him his father's always been."
"That's why I'm afraid he'll never like me," Margaret was quite simple enough to say wistfully, in response. "He never laughs out or chatters, as Mr. Coppered says he used to do."
And after such a conversation she would be especially considerate of Duncan—find some excuse for going upstairs when she heard the click of his crutch in the hall, so that he might find his father alone in the library, or excuse herself from a theatre trip so that they might be together.
"Oh, I'm so glad the Poindexters want us!" she said one night, over her letters.
"Why?" said Carey, amused by her ardor. "We can't go."
"I know it. But they're such nice people, Carey. Duncan will be so pleased to have them want me!"
Her husband laughed out suddenly, but a frown followed the laugh.
"You're very patient with the boy, Margaret. I—well, I've not been very patient lately, I'm afraid. He manages to exasperate me so, with these grandiose airs, that he doesn't seem the same boy at all!"
Mrs. Coppered came over to take the arm of his chair and put her white fingers on the little furrow between his eyes.
"It breaks my heart when you hurt him, Carey! He broods over it so. And, after all, he's only doing what they all—all the people he knows would do!"