Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/43

 LITTLE AGGIE

IV

stopped on the threshold with the sharp surprise of the sight of her son, and there was disappointment, though rather of the afflicted than of the irritated sort, in the question that, slowly advancing, she launched at him. "If you're still lolling about, why did you tell me two hours ago that you were leaving immediately?

Deep in a large brocaded chair, with his little legs stuck out to the fire, he was so much at his ease that he was almost flat on his back. She had evidently roused him from sleep, and it took him a couple of minutes, during which, without again looking at him, she directly approached a beautiful old French secretary, a fine piece of the period of Louis Quinze, to justify his presence. "I changed my mind—I couldn't get off."

"Do you mean to say you're not going?"

"Well, I'm thinking it over. What's a fellow to do?" He sat up a little, staring with conscious solemnity at the fire, and if it had been—as it was not—one of the annoyances she in general expected from him, she might have received the impression that his flush was the heat of liquor.

"He's to keep out of the way," she replied—"when he has led one so deeply to hope it." There had been a 33