"But I'm quite warm, Tom. Why, I have been out in the bitterest east wind, with snow on the ground and with a bad sore throat, not more heavily clad than this!"
"Well, my dear, that is an experience you may boast of, but which you will not practically repeat. Go, like a good girl, and put on that white woolly thing I saw in your wardrobe this morning."
She complies sweetly, but when out of sight, petulantly pulls the wrap from its shell, muttering—
"Well, I hope this will satisfy him. Why it's first cousin to a blanket! I shall be suffocated. Oh, dear!"
They sally forth and stroll slowly through the fashionable crowd, Addie's feet keeping time to a swinging gavotte, while she furtively eyes some dozen couples whose demeanor and gay attire incline her to suspect that they are in the same interesting position as herself and Tom.
After a time they leave the crowd and walk to the end of the pier, which they have all to themselves. They clamber over the moonlit rocks and stand arm in arm looking across the rippling waters, the music reaching them mellowed by distance into divinely soothing harmony.
It is an hour, a moment to put poetry into the breasts of the Smallweed family.
Armstrong feels its influence. He bends his dark face over his wife's, and asks sentimentally—
"Are you happy, Addie?"