"There—there IS a wife, Julia," he said. "This is her—she."
Well, she'd come out to make mischief—it was written all over her when she came in the door, but when Mr. Dick presented his wife, frightened as he was and still proud of her, and Mrs. Dick smiled in her pretty way, Miss Summers just walked across and looked down at her with a queer look on her face. I shut my eyes and waited for the crash, but nothing came, and when I opened them again there were the two women holding hands and Miss Summers smiling a sort of crooked grin at Mr. Dick.
"I ought to be very angry with your husband," she said. "I—well, I never expected him to marry without my being among those present. But since he has done it—! Dick, you wretched boy, you took advantage of my being laid up with the mumps!"
"Mumps!" Mrs. Dick said. "Why, he has just had them himself!" She looked around the circle suspiciously, and every one of us looked as guilty as if he had been caught with the mumps concealed around him somewhere.
"I didn't have real mumps," Mr. Dick explained. "It was only—er—a swelling."
"You SAID it was mumps, and even now you hate pickles!"
Mr. Pierce had edged over to Miss Summers and patted her shoulder.
"Be a good sport, Julia," he whispered.
She threw off his hand.
"I'm being an idiot!" she said angrily. "Dick's an ass, and he's treated me like a villain, but look at that baby! It will be twenty years before she has to worry about her weight."