“Great Scot! You never told us that.”
“Yes. She’s going to be in the new Billington show. And, naturally, she will expect to meet my family. I’ve told her all about you.”
“Did you explain father to her?” asked Lucille.
“Well, I just said she mustn’t mind him, as his bark was worse than his bite.”
“Well,” said Archie, thoughtfully, “he hasn’t bitten me yet, so you may be right. But you’ve got to admit that he’s a bit of a barker.”
Lucille considered.
“Really, Bill, I think your best plan would be to go straight to father and tell him the whole thing.—You don’t want him to hear about it in a roundabout way.”
“The trouble is that, whenever I’m with father, I can’t think of anything to say.”
Archie found himself envying his father-in-law this merciful dispensation of Providence; for, where he himself was concerned, there had been no lack of eloquence on Bill’s part. In the brief period in which he had known him, Bill had talked all the time and always on the one topic. As unpromising a subject as the tariff laws was easily diverted by him into a discussion of the absent Mabel.
“When I’m with father,” said Bill, “I sort of lose my nerve, and yammer.”