"My what? David! Tell me—exactly. Who is coming? Oh, dear!" she ended, tears of distress standing in her eyes.
David continued to eat his rice pudding. "Can I sit up till nine?"
Mrs. Richie pushed her chair back from the table, and caught her lower lip between her teeth. What should she do? But even as she asked herself the question, Dr. King stood, smiling, in the French window that opened on to the lawn.
"May I come in?" he said.
The fact was, a misgiving had risen in William's mind; perhaps a complete surprise would not be pleasant. Perhaps she would rather have an idea of what was going to happen. Perhaps she might want to dress up, or something. And so he dropped in to give a hint: "Half a dozen of us are coming in tonight to say how-do-you-do," he confessed, ("Whew! she doesn't need to dress up," he commented inwardly.) The red rose in her hair and her white cross-barred muslin with elbow sleeves seemed very elegant to William. He was so lost in admiration of her toilet, that her start of angry astonishment escaped him.
"Dr. King," said David, scraping up the sugar from his saucer, "is God good because He likes to be, or because He has to be?"
"David," said William King, "you will be the death of me!"
"Because, if He likes to be," David murmured, "I don't see why He gets praised; and if He has to be, why—"
"Dr. King," said Helena breathlessly, "I'm afraid—really, I'm not prepared for company; and—"
"Oh," said William, cheerfully, "don't bother about that. Mrs. King is going to bring up one or two little things, and I believe Mrs. Barkley has some ideas on the subject. Well, I must be going along. I hope you won't be sorry to see us? The fact is, you are too lonely up here with only David to keep you busy, though I must say, if he fires off questions like this one, I should think you would be pretty well occupied!"