The clerk gave a feeble smile. “Yes, sir—blue with a silver stripe—I remember, sir!”
“I should think you would! I told her to come down and have it changed, but Tommy—our little boy—had the measles just then, and afterward I got hurt in that hunting accident, and then we went to the country—and blessed if there’s ever been a time since when she’s had so much as a chance to think about it! That’s why now—well, see you push it through, Gregg.”
“Indeed yes, Mr. Gwynne! Good-day, Mr. Gwynne.”
“Good-day.”
“Beats me,” added Gwynne to himself outside, “why these clerk-fellows can’t say things as they come: ‘indeed yes’—why the Dickens should a thing be turned hind-side to, when you can say it straight out?”
It was a point he and Lucia had not infrequently discussed—in other denominations. Gwynne, going home to an empty house, felt he would willingly have dropped his side, if Lucia had been there to carry hers.
“She looked tired,” he thought, sitting alone by the library fire after dinner. “I hope her mother makes her rest. She looked regularly fagged.”
He spent the rest of the evening writing her a letter; and Tommy. In the morning he sent Mrs. Loring a telegram. “How’s Lucia?” it said. Lucia had been gone twenty-four hours.
“And you say you’re taken for granted!” triumphed her mother. “You think he’s more interested in Consolidated Iron? Stuff, my dear! John Gwynne’s forty. For a man of forty to follow his wife up with telegrams, the very day after——”
“He might have sent it to me,” said Lucia, ungraciously.