He considered.
"But I'm really not hungry, dear," he protested.
Alice, superbly incredulous, rang at once. Who was in the kitchen? Well, she was to be asked to send up a tray at once to Mr. Liggett. "Now that you asked me, the dinner had reached the point of ice-cream in a paper tub, as I sat down," he remembered. "You're a little miracle of healing to me, Alice. When I came in here I didn't know what we were up against, as a family. Your mother wished the girl pensioned——"
"Oh, Chris, not really?"
"I give you my word!" But he was enough his usual self to have taken his seat at the piano, now, and was looking at her across it, while his fingers fitted themselves lazily to chords and harmonics.
"I'll tell you something, if you'll promise to stop playing the instant your supper comes up!"
"I'll promise!"
"Well, then—the new Puccini is there!" She nodded toward the music-shelves, and he turned to the new score with an eager exclamation. Fifteen minutes later she had to scold him to bring him to the fire again, and to the smoking little supper. While Alice sipped ginger ale, Christopher fell upon his meal, and they discussed the probable presentation of the opera, and its quality.
But an hour later, when she was in bed, and Christopher was going back to the piano for another half-hour of music, she caught his hand.
"Chris, you're not worried about this Sheridan matter?"