“Er—well—you see—he’s very successful. He’s famous in his line—makes a heap of money. He stands very high in his profession.”
“That’s good, but what is it?”
“Why—he— If you knew him—you’d be proud to have him for a father-in-law or—a—whatever relative he’d be to you.”
“No doubt; but what does this wonderful man do for a living?”
“He’s an actor.”
Mrs. Winfield would have screamed the word in echo, but she was too weak. When she got her breath she hardly knew which of the myriad objections to mention first.
“An actor! You are engaged to the daughter of an actor! Why, that’s nearly as bad as if she were an actress herself!”
Bret mumbled, “Sheila is an actress.”
Then he ran for a glass of water.
At length his mother rallied sufficiently to flutter tenderly, with a mother’s infinite capacity for forgiving her children—and nobody else: