“I’ll be the distracted mother, and weep into my apron. Honor will look a duck in a cap. Who’s to be the little victim?”
“Jack, of course. He’ll look too sweet,” said Jack’s proud mother. “Can’t you imagine him, sitting up in bed with his curls peeping out beneath his bandages—he must have bandages—smiling like a little angel! He’d bring down the house. The people would love to see him.”
Then for the first time Geoffrey spoke. So far he had listened to the conversation in a silence which both his wife and sister-in-law felt to be disappointingly unsympathetic. Now his objections were put into words—
“Isn’t Jack rather young and—er—sensitive for such a public rôle? I should have thought that your concert would be complete without troubling about a tableau. In any case, there are plenty of village children.”
“Not with Jack’s face. He is sensitive, of course, but he’s not shy; he’d enjoy the excitement. And we should be there; he could come to no harm.”
“And the evening performance? Would you propose that he sat up for that also?”
Joan pressed her lips together in the struggle for patience. Really Geoffrey was too bad! What did he mean? What did he want? The whole scheme had been planned to give him pleasure, and here he was, silent, disapproving, throwing cold water. The effort at restraint made her voice sound unnatural even in her own ears.
“If we had the tableau in the afternoon, it would hardly do to leave it out in the evening—the only time when the villagers themselves will be able to be present.”
Before Geoffrey could reply the heel of Pixie’s shoe pressed firmly on his foot beneath the table, and a warning glance silenced his words. A moment later, when the discussion of pros and cons waxed loud at the far end of the table, she whispered an explanation—
“Don’t object, don’t argue. It’s to please you! You said she had taken no trouble.”