"What a modest way of putting it! But you should. A good wife would be the making of you, and give you something to think about. Don't you know that?"
"I'm sure of it. A man can have no greater blessing than a good wife—excepting none," he concluded mentally. "Shall I be allowed to see them before I go?"
"The children? Would you like to? Dudley is out, but the others are just going to have tea in the next room. My husband isn't back from the city yet, of course. Oh, the city! What a hold it does get on you men. As if it really mattered whether you made an extra thousand pounds one month or not!" A trayful of crockery rattled, and the footsteps of the little servant thudded through the passage.
"You're quite right," said Conrad. "What does it matter, when one comes to think of it?"
"Not but what Herbert's the best of boys," she added. "If it weren't that——" She hesitated, she endeavoured to look confused. "The fact is, he's—he's jealous, he's a very jealous man. Not that he has any reason to be—not exactly. Of course I'm awfully fond of him; he's a dear old silly! But I mean to say I can't help it when men want to talk to me—now can I? If I get half-a-dozen men round me, even though we're only talking about the simplest thing, he doesn't like it. Of course it makes it awfully awkward for me socially."
"It must," responded Conrad; "yes, I can understand that."
"I tell him he should have married a different woman." She giggled.
"Ah, but how unreasonable of you!" he said. "Then—if they won't mind being disturbed—I am really to see your children?"
"Oh, they won't mind at all, but I'm afraid you'll find them very untidy—they've just been having high jinks."
She led him to them presently, and slammed the door behind her. It shook his thoughts to the clergyman's description of Mrs. Page. Heredity again, perhaps. Two girls of about twelve or fourteen years of age and a boy in a pinafore were sitting at a table. At their mother and the visitor's entrance, they all took their hands off the cloth and stared.