"You are not?" Joseph Cameron, bewildered, laid his paper upon his knees and squinted up at his wife.
"No, Joe, I am not." As if it absorbed her, and no one could have said that it did not, for she kept house beautifully, Nellie straightened an etching; the quietly she walked out of the room.
She went into their bedroom and closed the door. After a while Cameron, watching warily, saw her come into the hall again in a peach-colored dress that he particularly liked her in; saw her go down the hall, away from him—and she had a very good back—to the nursery door, the warm, cheerful firelight falling full upon her face, her hands, her softly glowing dress. Billy, their only son, just learning to walk, toddled to meet her. Cameron saw the chubby hands rumple her skirts, saw Nellie stoop and swing him high with her firm arms, the drop him to his place upon her breast. The door close, the hall was shadowy again, the apartment as still as a place marked "To Let."
The dinner was on time and excellent; Nellie, decorative and chatty, was promptly in her place. Dinner over, they went to the sitting-room for their coffee. The apartment was very high up, the windows looking over the tree-tops of the Drive, across the Hudson tot he Jersey shore. It was March, and the shore lights wavered in gusts of rain that threatened to turn to snow. The room was warm; Cameron was suffocating; Nellie was serenely unaware. She had eaten well, from her soup through her cheese. There are times when, to a man, a woman's appetite is the last straw. She was tired, she said, but at her ease, and never prettier.
"Going out to-night, Joey?"
"Yes. Bridge hand around at Gordon's. Want a talk with Gordon about a matter of business."
"I like to have things to do in the afternoon, but when night comes"—Nellie smothered a contented yawn—"I love getting into something comfy, and just buzzing round our own lamp."
"I must own that I have never found afternoon diversions to be diverting." To save him he could not keep his voice good-natured. He had had a grind of a day, and was dog-tired; it seemed to him she ought to know it and talk about it.
"Yes?" Nellie mused. "It was amusing at the club to-day—the Non-descripts." She laughed softly. "It wasn't 'nondescript' to-day, though!"
"Some old maid telling you to bring your children up on the country, and throw your husbands out of their jobs?"