What a day! What a life! And what a little thing thus to epitomize the whole hopeless standstill of their circumstances!
And because it was a little thing, it had a power over Dorothy that twenty greater things would not have had. She was about to call the precious and disparaged Jackie when she thought better of it. Instead, she dropped her face into her hands and melted utterly. What Ruth did in the kitchen she did in the pond-room; and Jackie, who caught the contagion, filled the passage between with an inconsolable howling.
It was into this house of lamentation that Stan entered at half-past four.
"Steady, there!" he called to his younger son; and Jackie's bellow ceased instantaneously.
"Ruth's c'ying, so I c'ied too," he confided solemnly to his father; and the two entered the pond-room together, there to find Dorothy also in tears.
"Hallo, what's this?" said Stan. "Jackie, run and tell Ruth to hurry up with tea.... Head up, Dot—let's have a look at you——"
Perhaps he meant that Dot should have a look at him, for his face shone with an—alas!—not unwonted excitement. Dorothy had seen that shining before. It usually meant that he had been let in on the ground floor of the International Syndicate for the manufacture of pig-spears, or had secured an option on the world's supply of wooden pips for blackberry jam, or an agency for a synthesized champagne. And she never dashed the perennial hopefulness of it. The poor old boy would have been heartbroken had he been allowed to suppose that he was not, in intent at any rate, supporting his wife and children.
"What is it, old girl?" he said. "Just feeling low, eh? Never mind. I've some news for you."
Dorothy summoned what interest she could,—
"Not an agency or anything?" she asked, wiping her eyes.