“It’s more in your line, Grace. And I certainly hand it to Little Old Ready-Money for having the sense to appreciate you. If she hadn’t been the real goods she’d have backed away when you told her about Ward. Some woman, I say! It does sort of cheer things up to know there are people like that in the world. By the way, have you seen John lately?”
“Not since Tommy died.”
“Well, there’s another of the saints!” said Irene. “He’s pretending now he doesn’t know we were on a wild party and that he saved our reputations. He won’t talk about it; not at all! So don’t try to thank him. Tommy’s estate is going through Sanders’s office and John’s no end busy. He’s getting acquainted with Ward—funny how things work out! But if John has any idea about you and Ward he never lets on. I thought you might like to know that.”
“Well, he’s probably done some thinking,” Grace replied soberly; “John isn’t stupid.”
“He’s my idea of a prince, if you ask me! He’s making a big hit with my family; mother thinks he’s the grandest young man who ever came up the pike. She’s got him carrying all his mending and darning out to her to do and he’s so nice to her I’m getting jealous!”
III
Roy came home for a week-end, but only after his mother had written him repeatedly urging a visit. He had really been at work—Mrs. Durland had this from the Dean of the Law School—but his enthusiasm for the profession his mother had chosen for him was still at low ebb. He wanted to find work on a newspaper; he wanted to go West; anything was preferable to setting up as a lawyer in an office of his own. It was disclosed that Mrs. Durland had arranged to mortgage the house to raise money with which to establish him. But it was the definite announcement of her purpose to bring Roy’s wife home immediately after commencement, that the young couple might, as Mrs. Durland put it, begin their life together, that precipitated a crisis in Ethel’s relations with her family.
The baby would be born in August and Mrs. Durland contended that the family dignity would suffer far less if Roy announced his marriage when he left the university and joined his wife in his father’s house at Indianapolis.
Ethel was outraged by the plan. She would not live under the same roof with that creature; and she availed herself of the opportunity to tell Roy what she thought of him. He had always been petted and indulged; his mother had favored him over the other children; they had all been obliged to practice the most rigid self-denial to educate him, and this was the result!
Roy surlily martyrized himself in meeting his sister’s attack. He had never wanted to go to college; he hated the law and if it hadn’t been for John Moore’s stupid meddling he would have extricated himself from the scrape with the girl he had been forced to marry.