This time it was Teresa who colored with pleasure. The omens seemed more auspicious. When Richard rejoined them, he insisted upon riding in the back seat with the luggage. William protested. He was expecting to make a parade of it, with Dick and his pippin of a bride conspicuously together in the tonneau. Fairfield would certainly sit up and take notice. He, William, would give ’em an eye-full.
He accepted defeat with good grace because the consolation prize was seated beside him. As he spurred the flivver down Main Street, he flung over his shoulder to Richard:
“Did you have any adventures this trip? When I asked you last time you joshed me something fierce, and I got sore. I hope you’re going to act decent and loosen up to a fellow.”
“Well, Bill, it was exciting in spots down yonder in the Caribbean,” answered the deep, leisurely accents of brother Dick. “Why, I went ashore one night at Cartagena to buy some picture postcards to send you, and first thing you know, I—”
Teresa gasped. It was no tale to tell in Fairfield.
“And then what?” eagerly demanded William.
“I had the most awful dose of prickly heat you ever saw in your life. Hold on, Bill, stop the car. Here is something really exciting—a new porch on the minister’s house, and Charlie Schumacher has painted his barber shop, and Frank Morrison is building an addition to the livery stable. And you dare to tell me, Teresa, that my town is as dead as Cartagena. Here comes Colonel Judah Mason to get his mail! Spry as ever and ninety-five years old last Christmas Day.”
“You make me awful tired,” sulkily muttered William. “Just because you’re bigger than a house, you think you can treat me like a kid without any good sense.”
Teresa mollified him with flattering words and a deference that indicated he had found a kindred soul who could appreciate him. She became silent, however, when the car jolted into the lane between the stone walls and approached the low-roofed farmhouse snuggled close to the ground upon a windy hill. Her heart sank. She faced an ordeal more disquieting than when she had ventured into The Broadway Front in the guise of young Rubio Sanchez on pleasure bent. She fancied the mother of Richard Cary to be a woman of formidable stature, harsh and imperious, who ruled her household with a rod of iron.
Richard caught a glimpse of his mother’s face at a window, sitting there in her best black gown where she had aforetime kept watch for him, or had fluttered a handkerchief in farewell. Now she came quickly to the granite doorstep, a wisp of a woman whose thin features were set in lines of apprehension. Her mouth was austere, her eyes questioning. They dwelt upon the huge figure of Richard Cary with an expression commingled of affection and rebuke. Before she could greet him, he had leaped from the car and picked her up in his arms like a feather-weight of a burden. It was a rite of his home-coming and, as always, she objected: