“All the Sherlock Holmes in me,” said Judge Tiffany, “tells me that Miss Eleanor Gray is going to have a caller, and that Mrs. Edward C. Tiffany is in a state of vicarious perturbation.
“Further,” continued Judge Tiffany, dropping his hand upon her arm with that affectionate 101 gesture which drew all sting his words might have carried, “this is no common caller. For that young civil engineer and Mr. Perham the painter and Ned Greene, Mrs. Tiffany never blushes; but these new attentions to her niece—well, I hope my approach drew as much blood from her heart to her countenance twenty-five years ago!”
“I—I am perturbed,” said Mattie Tiffany. Running rose-bushes, just leafing out into their fall greenery, overgrew the pillars beside her. These she fell to pruning with her hands, so that she turned away her face.
“I see that discipline is relaxing in this family,” said Judge Tiffany. “Dear, dear, after managing a wife bravely and well for a quarter century, to fail in one’s age! Mattie, he works in my office, this blush-compelling caller; and I told you when I gave him the position not to take him up socially for the present!”
“But what was I to do when he telephoned to Eleanor and asked her?” Mrs. Tiffany turned her head with a turn of her thought. “Did you hear him telephone—was that how you knew?” 102
“I’d lose all hold on discipline if I revealed my methods.”
Judge Tiffany settled himself in an armchair as one prepared to make it a long session. “Let’s begin at the start. How came he to renew his acquaintance with Eleanor, and when, and where—and how much had Mattie Tiffany to do with bringing them together again?”
“Not a thing—truly Edward! Some of Eleanor’s slumming with Kate Waddington and the Masters—they met by accident at a restaurant—Eleanor asked him. You remember he was taken with her that afternoon just before she went to Europe—the time he mortified me so dreadfully.”
“And the time he attracted my attention,” said Judge Tiffany. “And now behold that youth, who will always get what he wants by frontal attack, reading my California cases and wearing out my desk with his feet.”
“Do you think he will make a good lawyer?” asked Mattie Tiffany. She turned full around at this, and the glance she threw into her husband’s face showed more than a casual matchmaker’s interest.