Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/217

 drank her tea in serene silence. He made a few haphazard remarks, hoping to lose in conversation the cloud that threatened his evening; but she only assented tranquilly and watched the changing colors of the early sunset.

“Have you made a vow to agree with everything I say?” he asked finally, half laughing, half in earnest.

“Not at all,” she replied placidly, “but you surely do not want an argument?”

“Oh, no,” he answered her, vexed at himself.

“What do you think of Mrs. ’s novel?” he suggested, as the pages, fluttering in the rising breeze, caught his attention.

“Mother is reading it, not I,” she returned indifferently. “I don’t care very much for the new novels.”

Involuntarily he turned as if to catch her mother’s criticism of the book: light, perhaps, but witty, and with a little tang