"Go on upstairs, Margaret," he said to his wife. "I've got a visitor."
He did not look at Elizabeth. "You settle down and be comfortable," he
added, "and I'll be up before long. Where's Jim?"
"I don't know. He didn't go to Nina's."
"He started with you, didn't he?"
"Yes. But he left us at the corner."
They exchanged glances. Jim had been worrying them lately. Strange how
a man could go along for years, his only worries those of business, his
track a single one through comfortable fields where he reaped only what
he sowed. And then his family grew up, and involved him without warning
in new perplexities and new troubles. Nina first, then Jim, and now this
strange story which so inevitably involved Elizabeth.
He put his arm around his wife and held her to him.
"Don't worry about Jim, mother," he said. "He's all right fundamentally.
He's going through the bad time between being a boy and being a man.
He's a good boy."
He watched her moving up the stairs, his eyes tender and solicitous. To
him she was just "mother." He had never thought of another woman in all
their twenty-four years together.
Elizabeth waited near him, her eyes on his face.
"Is it Dick?" she asked in a low tone.
"Yes."
"You don't mind, daddy, do you?"
"I only want you to be happy," he said rather hoarsely. "You know that,
don't you?"
She nodded, and turned up her face to be kissed. He knew that she had no
doubt whatever that this interview was to seal her to Dick Livingstone
for ever and ever. She fairly radiated happiness and confidence. He left
her standing there going back to the living-room closed the door.