“A sound precaution,” commended Timothy, going over to the window.
“And you’ll look after the Angel?” Patsy stopped by the stepmother’s chair. “It may divert me to go out for a bit,” she added, plaintively. “Of course the poor boy—Timmie—can’t understand all I’m going through. He’s a regular brick, but in love, poor thing; and then how could he understand? He’s only a writer.”
“Only a writer,” repeated the stepmother, with an odd little smile. “A writer about Plain People and their Problems. Yes, dear, run along. As you say, it may divert you. If the Angel cries I’ll—I’ll give it smelling-salts. I dare say I sha’n’t kill it.”
“Oh, no,” Patsy called back, pleasantly. “You couldn’t. It has Warren’s obstinacy. But it’s a darling, just the same.” She flew up-stairs as a lusty squall blew down to them.
“She hasn’t congratulated you yet,” murmured the stepmother, gazing at Timothy with quite an unstepmotherly gaze.
“No—but she will to-morrow,” prophesied Timothy, with only a writer’s intuition.
The two short, blue-coated figures moved off briskly down the street toward the Avenue. From the window, the stepmother smiled at the identical cut of their shoulders, the boyish, easy swing of their same stride; it seemed such a very little while since she had watched them start off every day to school together—the blue coats had lengthened such a little bit—and now—— Timothy engaged, and Patsy married—married and half divorced; the stepmother’s nose wrinkled in a funny smile. Ah, well! There are poignant foolish heartaches for stepmothers as well as other people, but—just then the Angel cried. The stepmother caught up the frilly frock and hurried upstairs; where there is an angel——!
“For the Angel’s sake, I mean to have only a separation,” Patsy was explaining to Timothy. “Besides, it—it will serve Warren Adams only right not to be able to—t-to marry again. A Congressman without a wife! Imagine it!”
“There have been instances”—Timothy was knocking leaves with his stick—“isolated instances, I grant you,” he added, hastily, catching his sister’s eye. “I think myself such Congressmen are to be felt for. I suppose”—reflectively—“when Warren is sworn in, there will be nobody there except his mother.”
“I suppose not,” returned Patsy, shortly; and ramming her stout-gloved little hands into her mannish pockets, she began to whistle.