"You don't like my efforts!" Isabelle exclaimed wearily. She herself, as she had said, was not satisfied; but money as well as strength and her husband's dislike of "more building" had held her hand.
"We all change," Vickers replied humorously. "I can't blame the old place for looking different. I have changed somewhat myself, and you, Cairy,"—he glanced at the figure by his sister's side, which had sleek marks of prosperity as well as the Farm,—"too. All changed but you, Isabelle!"
"But I have changed a lot!" she protested. "I have grown better looking, Vickie, and my mind has developed, hasn't it, Tom? One's family never sees any change but the wrinkles!"…
Vickers, turning back to the terrace where Fosdick and Gossom were smoking, had a depressed feeling that of all the changes his was the greatest.
"I must look in on my little girl," he explained to Isabelle, as he left her and Cairy.
Isabelle watched him mount the steps. His small figure had grown heavy from his inactive life abroad. The thick hair had almost gone from the top of his head, and the neat pointed beard had become bushy. In his negligent clothes he looked quite slouchy, she had felt that evening, as if he had long ceased to have any interest in his person. "It's all that beast of a woman," she said resentfully to Cairy, remembering the slender, quite elegant brother of the old days. "And to think of his saddling himself with her brat and lugging her around with him! I couldn't make him drop her in New York with her governess. But it's impossible!"
"The lady left him her husband's child, as a souvenir, didn't she?"
"I can't think of it!" Isabelle exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders. "To go off with that other man—after all he had given up for her! The beast!"
"Perhaps that was the best she could do for him under the circumstances," Cairy remarked philosophically. "But the child must be a bore." He laughed at the comical situation.
"Just like Vick!"