“Well?” said his wife. He shook his head. “Speak up!” she commanded; “I can’t hear when you turn your face to the wall and mumble like that.”
He gave the explanation and waited for signs of collapse.
“You’re a pretty one to send to a railway-station, and no mistake!” she remarked, taking off the tea-cosy. “Another time I must go myself.”
“None for me, mother,” he said desolately. “I couldn’t drink it even if you poured it out. Wonder what’s happened to the boy?”
“How should I know?”
He walked up and down the room, looked through the window at the iron grating, and rubbed his head furiously with a red pocket-handkerchief, the wife watching him with an amused expression. As she took the knife in order to cut the home-made cake, still warm from the oven, he raised his hand as a feeble protest against asking him to taste food.
“Can we have the winder open?” he asked submissively. “This room seems stuffy to me, or else it is that I’m upset. I feel—I feel as though I can’t sit down at this table.”
“Suppose,” said his wife, with a wink—“suppose you have a look underneath it.”
The boy crawled out, smoothed his hair, and submitted a forehead to his parent; the mother came near to choking with delight at the success of her elaborate scheme, and presently leaned head exhaustedly against the antimacassar which protected the back of the horsehair easy-chair. How on earth had they missed each other?—that was what the delighted father wanted to know. Henry must have jumped out of the train and cut away uncommonly sharp. Henry, permitted under the special circumstances to discard convention and begin with cake, working back through the toast to the bread and butter, confessed that he had lost no time.
“But, my lad,” urged his father more seriously, “you knowed that I was coming to meet you.”