Richard stretched himself, turning his head in the hollow of his hands, and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"That is exactly what I would thank you so heartily to tell me," he answered. "Do I, or don't I seriously wish it? I give you my word, mother, I don't know."
"Oh; but, my dearest, that is folly! You must have inclination enough, one way or the other, to come to a decision. I was careful not to commit myself. It is still easy not to ask them without being guilty of any discourtesy."
"It isn't that," Richard said. "It is simply that being anything but heroic I am trying of two evils to choose the least. I should like to have my uncle—and Helen here immensely. But if the visit wasn't a success I should be proportionately disappointed and vexed. So is it worth the risk? Disappointments are sufficiently abundant anyhow. Isn't it slightly imbecile to run a wholly gratuitous risk of adding to their number?"
Then the fixed idea began stealthily, yet surely, to reassert its dominion; for there was a perceptible flavour of discouragement in the young man's speech.
"Dickie, there is nothing wrong, is there,—nothing the matter, to-night?"
"Oh, dear no, of course not!" he answered, half closing his eyes. "Nothing in the world's the matter."
He unclasped his hands, leaned forward and patted the bulldog lying across the rug at his feet. "At least nothing more than usual, nothing more than the abiding something which always has been and always will be the matter."
"Ah, my dear!" Katherine cried softly.
"I've just been reading Burton's Anatomy here," he went on bending down, so that his face was hidden, while he pulled the dog's soft ears. "He assures all—whom it may concern—that 'bodily imperfections do not a whit blemish the soul or hinder the operations of it, but rather help and much increase it.' There, Camp, poor old man, don't start—it's nothing worse than me. I wonder if the elaborate pains which have been taken through generations of your ancestors to breed you into your existing and very royal hideousness—your flattened nose and perpetual grin, for instance—do help and much increase the operations of your soul!"