There was nothing more said for a few minutes; then he remarked carelessly, “You didn’t tell me where you were going.”
“I am going to see my cousin-in-law. I hate her, but I love her husband.”
“That’s frankness that might be misunderstood.”
“I know it,” Meg replied earnestly, “but it’s true. You see, Ada has always felt that she married beneath her, and she has convinced poor Charlie that she did. But how she came to cherish such a notion I don’t know, for he’s the salt of the earth!”
“Was it a question of family?”
“Yes. Her father was at one time pretty well off, and at the time she married Charlie some people thought she might have done better. Charlie’s one of those big-souled men who never accumulate anything, and he is blunt and hearty in his manner. Now she thinks because she crooks her little finger when she drinks a glass of water, that she is more refined than he!”
Robert laughed boyishly at her quaint description, and said, “I think I know them—not this particular couple, but their prototypes.”
“Are there others like Charlie, I wonder,” she said musingly. “He stands out so in my mind because he’s the best, the very best man I ever saw.”
After a short walk, she stopped in front of a modest two-story house, and turning to her companion, said coaxingly, “Come in with me, and meet Ada—then you’ll see for yourself.”
“You are sure it won’t be an intrusion?”