Dr. Lawton, putting aside the vestibule portière, with affected timidity: “Very sorry. Merely a father.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh! Dr. Lawton? I am so glad to see you!” She gives him her hand: “I thought it was my aunt. We can’t understand why she hasn’t come. Why! where’s Miss Lawton?”
Lawton: “That is precisely what I was going to ask you.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Why, she isn’t here.”
Lawton: “So it seems. I left her with the carriage at the door when I started to walk here. She called after me down the stairs that she would be ready in three seconds, and begged me to hurry, so that we could come in together, and not let people know I’d saved half a dollar by walking.”
Mrs. Roberts: “She’s been detained too!”
Roberts, coming forward: “Now you know what it is to have a delinquent Aunt-Mary-in-law.”
Lawton, shaking hands with him: “O Roberts! Is that you? It’s astonishing how little one makes of the husband of a lady who gives a dinner. In my time—a long time ago—he used to carve. But nowadays, when everything is served à la Russe, he might as well be abolished. Don’t you think, on the whole, Roberts, you’d better not have come?”
Roberts: “Well, you see, I had no excuse. I hated to say an engagement when I hadn’t any.”
Lawton: “Oh, I understand. You wanted to come. We all do, when Mrs. Roberts will let us.” He goes and sits down by Mrs. Roberts, who has taken a more provisional pose on the sofa. “Mrs. Roberts, you’re the only woman in Boston who could hope to get people, with a fireside of their own—or a register—out to a Christmas dinner. You know I still wonder at your effrontery a little?”