Aunt Lora was not to be appeased.
“That is absolutely no excuse. He has just left a ship where he cannot have failed to pick up bacilli of every description. He has himself only recently recovered from a probably infectious fever. He is wearing a beard, notoriously the most germ-ridden abomination in existence.”
Kirk started. He was not proud of his beard, but he had not regarded it as quite the pestilential thing which it seemed to be in the eyes of Mrs. Porter.
“And he picks up the child!” she went on. “Hugs him! Kisses him! And you say he could not have known better! Surely the most elementary common sense—”
“Aunt Lora!” said Ruth.
She spoke quietly, but there was a note in her voice which acted on Mrs. Porter like magic. Her flow of words ceased abruptly. It was a small incident, but it had the effect of making Kirk, grateful as he was for the interruption, somehow vaguely uneasy for a moment.
It seemed to indicate some subtle change in Ruth’s character, some new quality of hardness added to it. The Ruth he had left when he sailed for Colombia would, he felt, have been incapable of quelling her masterful aunt so very decisively and with such an economy of words. It suggested previous warfare, in which the elder woman had been subdued to a point where a mere exclamation could pull her up when she forgot herself.
Kirk felt uncomfortable. He did not like these sudden discoveries about Ruth.
“I will explain to Kirk,” she said. “You go up and see that everything is right in the nursery.”
And—amazing spectacle!—off went Mrs. Porter without another word.