“Then don’t make so much fuss about it. You’d better go to bed.”
“I’m comfortable right now, but I’ve been lonesome and unhappy all day. I hoped you would come a long time ago. I kept a fine fire going for you—really just for you—in the library, and now you’re as cross and uninteresting as you can be. I didn’t suppose you Craighills were all cross.”
“So father was cross was he?” asked Wayne, scowling into his cigarette case.
“Oh, terribly cross. I tried to be polite to him and he went into his room and slammed the door. He was very cross this morning when he came home from Boston. He saw my mother up there.”
Wayne’s manner changed.
“That’s perfectly bully! If you have any more news like that, Addie, you may go on and tell me. Let’s move into the library.”
He stirred the fire into life and threw on fresh wood. He was refreshed by his luncheon and it was the curse of his temperament that he never ignored the nearest pleasure. Addie was a pretty trifle of a woman and it was not unpleasant to find her in a receptive mood. She crouched beside him, so close that he could have placed his hand on her head.
“This is very cozy, isn’t it? It must be hideously cold outside. Your father was going to take me to Bermuda for Easter, but I suppose we may all be in the poor-house by that time.”
“Stranger things have happened. But they wouldn’t take you at the alms-house. You are young and capable. I don’t just see you sitting on the bench with the old ladies, knitting socks. It would not become you, Addie. If the worst comes you would go out like a brave little woman and support your husband.”
She flashed a frightened look at him; she had no idea that her husband’s difficulties were serious, though she assumed he might be temporarily embarrassed, as men often were, without finding it necessary to change their manner of life. She remembered that the roof over her head belonged to Wayne and she sought to reassure herself as to the permanence of the arrangement by which Colonel Craighill had the use of it.