‘Come on, let’s go in to dinner.... No, Nancy isn’t married yet, but the house feels as if news might break out any day—likely by the time I—we—get back—’
The last was nothing like a foregone conclusion, but phrased tentatively, with questioning look.
‘No, I won’t be going back just yet,’ Elbert said.
He felt the silence; also suddenly he felt his father’s side as well as his own. A man accustomed to a houseful of daughters might really want to have his only son standing beside him very much. It was an entirely new angle.
‘Haven’t got enough?’
‘Not quite through—’
‘Going back to Heaslep’s?’
‘Oh, no—’
No resistance from his father. Elbert hardly knew how to handle this new man-to-man acquiescence—no tampering. He had braced himself, but no strength was required; and now for a moment he was unnerved by friendliness. Was his father changed, because of things the newspapers said about his drive to Nogales? A whole lot of stuff had been written which no fellow could pay any attention to, about himself. Elbert began to feel an almost irresistible impulse to tell the whole story to his father.
‘Not going back to San Pasquali?’ the latter asked.