Impatiently she tossed aside the telegram which announced that her husband’s old friend, Oren Taylor, the artist, would arrive at seven o’clock that evening.
“Don’t let it bother you, dear,” said Clyde. “I’ll take him to the club for dinner.”
“You can’t. Have you forgotten that I’ve invited Louise Ennis for her quarterly—well—visitation?”
Clyde whistled. “That’s rather a poser. What business have I got to have a cousin like Louise, anyway!”
Upon this disloyal observation Dr. Strong walked into the library. He was a very different Dr. Strong from the nerve-shaken wanderer who had dropped from nowhere into the Clyde household a year previous as its physician on the Chinese plan of being employed to keep the family well. The painful lines of the face were smoothed out. There was a deep light of content, the content of the man who has found his place and filled it, in the level eyes; and about the grave and controlled set of the mouth a sort of sensitive buoyancy of expression. The flesh had hardened and the spirit softened in him.
“Did you hear that, Strong?” inquired Mr. Clyde, turning to him.
“I have trained ears,” answered Dr. Strong solemnly. “They’re absolutely impervious to any speech not intended for them.”
“Open them to this: Louise Ennis is invited for dinner to-night. So is my old friend Oren Taylor, who wires to say that he’s passing through town.”
“Is that Taylor, the artist of ‘The First Parting’? I shall enjoy meeting him.”
“Well, you won’t enjoy meeting Cousin Louise,” declared Mr. Clyde. “We ask her about four times a year, out of family piety. You’ve been lucky to escape her thus far.”