“Change the subject, Fliss.”
“No, I won’t, Dick. I’ll say my say. I’ll say that you and your good wife ought to get together—if only for that blessed Dorothea’s sake. I suppose Cecily wouldn’t let me have Dorothea? I helped bring her into the world. Well, maybe I can send her an anonymous present once in a while. Dick, did you ever like me?”
“I wonder just how much,” teased Dick.
“Cecily and I have always been jealous of each other, you know. I suppose that when we are old and gray and wear caps (only I mean to Marcel mine to the end), that we will still be jealous of the parts of our husbands’ minds we haven’t got. Cecily has a lot of Matthew’s (the best part of it, too) and I have a tiny scrap of yours which she begrudges me. But she can’t have it, Dick. I cling to it. She can have most of you, but I want the tiny scrap of you that wants brighter color than Cecily will give you. So there!”
She finished with her old impudent smile.
“Foolish woman!” he said.
“Foolish nothing. I’m a working woman these days with no time for foolishness. I’m storming Washington society. And as Matthew goes up and up I shall trail along after him. Just talking of you, darling,” she finished as Matthew came in sight.
Dick spent a few dutiful days with his mother, repressing her efforts to repeat to him the gossip about his affairs and just as definitely refusing to hear or talk ill of Cecily. Mrs. Harrison wanted him to make some effort to get Dorothea for her. But he refused.
“Dorothea is better with her mother.”
“You never know. Cecily will probably get some notion to put the child into a convent.”