It had taken just half an hour for Philip to screw up his courage to quench the flow of Phyllis’s inconsequent chatter.
“Phyllis, you must be more discreet in your intercourse with Mr. Webster,” he said, as the clock struck.
“What do you mean?” inquired Phyllis, as if greatly mystified, though she perfectly understood. “Do you think I tire him? He seemed to like to hear me talk.”
“You must not let poor Dan get fond of you, Phyllis,” Philip told her with a fine assumption of sternness.
“But everyone does, you know,” Phyllis answered, as if stating an everyday fact of no particular importance.
“You don’t know Dan as I do,” Philip hammered away. “He is apt to become very much in earnest. He thinks you are free. It is not fair to him, Phyllis.”
“You always lecture me,” Phyllis said; “yet I like you, and it is to you I bring my worries.”
Philip laughed. Worries? What did this small person—this captivating little bride of weeks—know of worries? It struck him that she did not worry a great deal about her absent husband.
“I wish you would tell your father like a brave girl, and face the music,” he said, as the outcome of his thought about the absent bridegroom.
“Tell him now he is so cross with me about that horrid Mr. Langridge?” broke out Phyllis indignantly. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she added, pulling his arm and tip-toeing. “I believe father wants to marry again himself, and he wants me settled and out of the way. And I know who it is, but I daren’t tell you, of all people.”