Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/28

6 awkwardly, “Oh, I’m just home for a little while; I only got here this morning, in fact.”

Skipworth noted the hesitation. Did the old people get panicky at the thought of entertaining a wild man from Virginia, and send an S O S for Gerald, he wondered.

“We are so glad you could come to us,” Lady Sherwood said rather hastily just then. And again he could not fail to note that she was prompting her husband.

The latter reluctantly turned round, and said, “Yes, yes, quite so. Welcome to Bishopsthorpe, my boy,” as if his wife had pulled a string, and he responded mechanically, without quite knowing what he said. Then, as his eyes rested a moment on his guest, he looked as if he would like to bolt out of the room. He controlled himself, however, and, jerking round again to the fireplace, went on murmuring, “Yes, yes, yes,” vaguely—just like the dormouse at the Mad Tea-Party, who went to sleep, saying, “Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle,” Cary could not help thinking to himself.

But after all, it wasn’t really funny, it was pathetic. Gosh, how doddering the poor old boy was! Skipworth wondered, with a sudden twist at his heart, if the war was playing the deuce with his home people, too. Was his own father going to pieces like this, and had his mother’s gay vivacity fallen into that still remoteness of Lady Sherwood’s? But of course not! The Carys hadn’t suffered as the poor Sherwoods had, with their youngest son, Curtin, killed early in the war, and now Gerald knocked out so tragically. Lord, he thought, how they must all bank on Chev! And of course they would want to hear at once about him. “I left Chev as fit as anything, and he sent all sorts of messages,” he reported, thinking it more discreet to deliver Chev’s messages thus vaguely than to repeat his actual carefree remark, which had been, “Oh, tell ’em I’m jolly as a tick.”

But evidently there was something wrong with the words as they were, for instantly he was aware of that curious sense of withdrawal on their part. Hastily reviewing them, he decided that they had counted too