“Bless me, Richard, that’s a trick you learned from your father that’s dead and gone. I used to tell him it was dreadful undignified.”
He let her down at the threshold and turned to present his wife. Teresa stood wistful and uncertain, yet with a certain amusement that she should have felt terrified of meeting this gray-haired little woman who looked as if a breath might blow her away. Richard cried, in a mood of boyish elation:
“Didn’t I tell you I simply had to make the southern run, mother? Something was pulling me. Now I know why. Teresa was at the other end of the tow-rope.”
“I am pleased to meet your wife, Richard,” primly replied Mrs. Cary. “We’ll do our best to make her comfortable and happy here, I am sure. Your room is ready, and dinner will be on the table in half an hour.”
“All I ask is to make your son happy,” said Teresa, her emotions near the surface. Her smile was disarming, and the inflections of her voice stirred the mother’s heart. Presently Teresa went upstairs, but Richard lingered below. Anxiously his mother exclaimed:
“You don’t know how thankful I am to have a few minutes alone with you. Seems as if I couldn’t wait. I don’t mean to fret, but who is she and who are her folks, and how did it happen? She don’t act as foreign as I expected and she’s as pretty as a picture and has sweet, ladylike ways, but—”
“Better get acquainted before you borrow trouble,” drawled the beaming Richard. “To begin with, she is an orphan, which ought to appeal to your sympathy. The last near relative she had, an uncle, died not long ago. He was the old gentleman I sailed for in the Valkyrie that was lost in collision. When it comes to family, she can match ancestors with the Carys and Chichesters and have some left over.”
“And where did you meet her, Richard?”
“On shipboard going south. It was a case of love at first sight.”
“Hum-m! I never set any great store by hasty marriages, but there’s exceptions to every rule and let us hope and pray this will be one of them. Isn’t Teresa a Romanist? Does she have to confess to a priest every so often? Did you tell her we didn’t have such a thing in Fairfield?”