Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/128

120 slam the door behind me, to stand in the light of the hall.

“Leslie!” exclaimed mother, “I am glad to see yon.”

“Thank you,” he said, turning to Lettie, who sat with her lap full of work, her head busily bent.

“You see I can’t get up,” she said, giving him her hand, adorned as it was by the thimble. “How nice of you to come! We did not know you were back.”

“But!” he exclaimed, then he stopped.

“I suppose you enjoyed yourself,” she went on calmly.

“Immensely, thanks.”

Snap, snap, snap; went her needle through the new stuff. Then, without looking up, she said:

“Yes, no doubt. You have the air of a man who has been enjoying himself.”

“How do you mean?”

“A kind of guilty—or shall I say embarrassed—look. Don’t you notice it mother?”

“I do!” said my mother.

“I suppose it means we may not ask him questions,” Lettie concluded, always very busily sewing.

He laughed. She had broken her cotton, and was trying to thread the needle again.

“What have you been doing this miserable weather?” he enquired awkwardly.

“Oh, we have sat at home desolate. ‘Ever of thee I’m fo-o-ondly dreēaming’—and so on. Haven’t we mother?”

“Well,” said mother, “I don’t know. We imagined him all sorts of lions up there.”