She had said, “Suppose I add a mother’s urging?”
It might have been a warm suggestion, sentimental, kindly.
It was not, as he knew by her abrupt tenseness. “Mother…” he began.
The deliberations were interrupted by the butler, who came in carrying a telephone on a jack.
Jeffrey Fahlstead had served the Sloans for more than thirty years. For twenty, they had called him “Jeff.” An Irishman, he was, like Willis the chauffeur, unbent by age, stiffened, rather. “It’s Washington, D.C., ma’ am,” he said.
Minerva took the phone, spoke her name, and soon shot a quick annoyed glance at her son.
From the conversation which developed, Kit gathered guiltily that his afternoon Bight was dimly viewed by various persons who wanted him grounded, or relieved of his license, put in jail, or given a lunacy test. Complaints had already gone to high Federal authorities. Into this dilemma his mother barged serenely, however. She could have used the “friendly tip” from an important Washington official to have him grounded; and Minera didn’t like the risks her son took by flying. But she wanted, that evening, something else from Kit.
Listening to one side of the talk, Kit realized that his mother, coming forcefully to his aid, was going to fix, grease and appease everything and everybody. His mother, he reflected, was completely indispensable to him. The least he could do was to please her in this matter of marriage.
When she hung lip, she didn’t even make it a long lecture. “Take me weeks to get the thing straightened out,” she said, concluding it, “and don’t ever fly like that again! But, Kit, I want to go back to our previous talk.” She nodded the butler out of the room. “As I said, an odd thing has happened at the bank.”
“Really? What, Muzz?”