"Oh, dearest, guess!" she commanded between her kisses.
"Guess what?" he asked, walking her into the parlor with his arms round her. She kept her hands behind her when he released her, and they stood confronted.
"What should you consider the best news—or not news exactly; the best thing—in the world?"
"Why, I don't know. Has the play been a great success in Chicago?"
"Better than that!" she shouted, and she brought an open letter from behind her, and flourished it before him, while she went on breathlessly: "It's from Godolphin, and of course I opened it at once, for I thought if there was anything worrying in it, I had better find it out while you were gone, and prepare you for it. He's sent you a check for $300—twelve performances of the play—and he's written you the sweetest letter in the world, and I take back everything I ever said against him! Here, shall I read it? Or, no, you'll want to read it yourself. Now, sit down at your desk, and I'll put it before you, with the check on top!"
She pushed him into his chair, and he obediently read the check first, and then took up the letter. It was dated at Chicago, and was written with a certain histrionic consciousness, as if Godolphin enjoyed the pose of a rising young actor paying over to the author his share of the profits of their joint enterprise in their play. There was a list of the dates and places of the performances, which Maxwell noted were chiefly matinées; and he argued a distrust of the piece from this fact, which Godolphin did not otherwise betray. He said that the play constantly grew upon him, and that with such revision as they should be able to give it together when he reached New York, they would have one of the greatest plays of the modern stage. He had found that wherever he gave it the better part of his audience was best pleased with it, and he felt sure that when he put it on for a run the houses would grow up to it in every way. He was going to test it for a week in Chicago; there was no reference to his wish that Maxwell should have been present at the rehearsals there; but otherwise Godolphin's letter was as candid as it was cordial.
Maxwell read it with a silent joy which seemed to please his wife as well as if he had joined her in rioting over it. She had kept the lunch warm for him, and now she brought it in from the kitchen herself and set it before him, talking all the time.
"Well, now we can regard it as an accomplished fact, and I shall not allow you to feel any anxiety about it from this time forward. I consider that Godolphin has done his whole duty by it. He has kept the spirit of his promises if he hasn't the letter, and from this time forward I am going to trust him implicitly, and I'm going to make you. No more question of Godolphin in this family! Don't you long to know how it goes in Chicago? But I don't really care, for, as you say, that won't have the slightest influence in New York; and I know it will go here, anyway. Yes, I consider it, from this time on, an assured success. And isn't it delightful that, as Godolphin says, it's such a favorite with refined people?" She went on a good while to this effect, but when she had talked herself out, Maxwell had still said so little that she asked, "What is it, Brice?"
"Do you think we deserve it?" he returned, seriously.
"For squabbling so? Why, I suppose I was tired and overwrought, or I shouldn't have done it."