Delight Haverford was to come out in December, but there were times when
the Doctor wondered if she was really as keen about it as she pretended
to be. He found her once or twice, her usually active hands idle in her
lap, and a pensive droop to her humorous young mouth.
"Tired, honey?" he asked, on one of those occasions.
"No. Just talking to myself."
"Say a few nice things for me, while you're about it, then."
"Nice things! I don't deserve them."
"What awful crime have you been committing? Break it to me gently. You
know my weak heart."
"Your tobacco heart!" she said, severely. "Well, I've been committing a
mental murder, if you want to know the facts. Don't protest. It's done.
She's quite dead already."
"Good gracious! And I have reared this young viper! Who is she?"
"I don't intend to make you an accessory, daddy."
But' behind her smile he felt a real hurt. He would have given a great
deal to have taken her in his arms and tried to coax out her trouble
so he might comfort her. But that essential fineness in him which
his worldliness only covered like a veneer told him not to force her
confidence. Only, he wandered off rather disconsolately to hunt his pipe
and to try to realize that Delight was now a woman grown, and liable to
woman's heart-aches.
"What do you think it is?" he asked that night, when after her nightly
custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with
a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his
reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain
uneasiness.
"Who do you think it is, you mean."
"Very well, only the word is 'whom.'"
Mrs. Haverford ignored this.
"It's that Hayden girl," she said. "Toots. And Graham Spencer."
"Do you think that Delight--"
"She always has. For years."
Which was apparently quite clear to them both.
"If it had only been a nice girl," Mrs. Haverford protested,
plaintively. "But Toots! She's fast, I'm sure of it."
"My dear!"
"And that boy needs a decent girl, if anybody ever did. A shallow
mother, and a money-making father--all Toots Hay den wants is his money.
She's ages older than he is. I hear he is there every day and all of
Sundays."