The bride wept in secret, and grew nervous and timid in manner. Mrs. Brewster-Smith, however, found this comprehensible enough, and one hot summer afternoon Genevieve went into George's office with her lovely head held high, her color quite gone, and her breath coming quickly with indignation. [Illustration: It was hard on the darling old boy to come home to Miss Emelene and the cat and Eleanor and Alys every night!] "George—I don't care what we do, or where we go! But I can't stand it! She said—she said—she told me—"
Her husband was alone in his office, and Genevieve was now crying in his arms. He patted her shoulder tenderly.
"I'm so worried all the time about dinners, and Lottie's going, and that child getting downstairs and letting in flies and licking the frosting off the maple cake," sobbed Genevieve, "that of course I show it! And if I have given up my gym work, it's just because I was so busy trying to get some one in Lottie's place! And now they say—they say—that they know what the matter is, and that I mustn't dance or play golf—the horrible, spying cats! I won't go back, George, I will not! I—"
Again George was wonderful. He put his arm about her, and she sat down on the edge of his desk, and leaned against that dear protective shoulder and dried her eyes on one of his monogrammed handkerchiefs. He reminded her of a long-standing engagement for this evening with Betty and Penny, to go out to Sea Light and have dinner and a swim, and drive home in the moonlight. And when she was quiet again, he said tenderly:
"You mustn't let the 'cats' worry you, Pussy. What they think isn't true, and I don't blame you for getting cross! But in one way, dear, aren't they right? Hasn't my little girl been riding and driving and dancing a little too hard? Is it the wisest thing, just now? You have been nervous lately, dear, and excitable. Mightn't there be a reason? Because I don't have to tell you, sweetheart, nothing would make me prouder, and Uncle Martin, of course, has made no secret of how he feels! You wouldn't be sorry, dear?"
Genevieve had always loved children deeply. Long before this her happy dreams had peopled the old house in Sheridan Road with handsome, dark-eyed girls, and bright-eyed boys like their father.
But, to her own intense astonishment, she found this speech from her husband distasteful. George would be "proud," and Uncle Martin pleased. But it suddenly occurred to Genevieve that neither George nor Uncle Martin would be tearful and nervous. Neither George nor Uncle Martin need eschew golf and riding and dancing. To be sick, when she had always been so well! To face death, for which she had always had so healthy a horror! Cousin Alex had died when her baby came, and Lois Farwell had never been well after the fourth Farwell baby made his appearance.
Genevieve's tears died as if from flame. She gently put aside the sustaining arm, and went to the little mirror on the wall, to straighten her hat. She remembered buying this hat, a few weeks ago, in the ecstatic last days of the old life.
"We needn't talk of that yet, George," she said quietly.
She could see George's grieved look, in the mirror. There was a short silence in the office.