“It is, truly, and it looks very potent to me.” Still carrying her carefully, he stepped over to the rug and stood by design where his mother had lately stood by chance. “I wish,” he said gently, his eyes on Glen Darrow, “I wish that you could manage to be a little nicer to me....”
Glen had told herself, after her civil and secretly shaken parting from Mrs. Parker, that nothing was changed; she had been mistaken about the woman; she was not an oppressor; her low and sensible heel was not upon the neck of the toiler; she was indeed (Mrs. Parker had talked with her at length on labor problems and conditions and what her clubs were striving to do for their betterment) even as Dr. Darrow had been, the friend of the submerged. It was possible to be sorry for such a woman who was the mother of such a son, but it was not possible or necessary to change one’s opinion of that son. She had thought it all out clearly in a night which held little of sleep, but now, seeing him here in her beloved room, standing upon the lovely low-toned rug her pale mother had loved, with Glory cuddling thankfully in his arms, it was not quite so clear.
“I wish,” he began again, but she interrupted him, speaking quickly and harshly, with something of panic in her voice.
“I cannot change my convictions. My father brought me up to believe certain things, to have certain standards——”
“And he made a wonderful job of it,” he admitted cordially, “but after all, you know, your father was—yesterday—and we are to-day, and to-morrow!”
The doctor’s daughter shook a stubborn head. Here in this room which pale Effie would have adored, facing a youth from the world she worshiped, Glen would be true to Glenwood Darrow’s creed. She faced him steadily. “My father is dead, but he taught me to be a good hater.”
“And I am alive,” said Peter Parker, “and I shall teach you to be a good lover.”
There was a little pause, delicate as a bubble; a breath would break it, and the three of them, the boy and the girl and the sick child, seemed hardly to breath. Then there was a shattering; a heavy step on the porch and a sharp knock at the door, and the door’s opening.
“Super!” gasped Glory, hiding her face against Peter’s neck.
“’Evening, Manders!” Peter was briskly pleasant. “Want to see me?”