He was up and out again, though he felt that he had not quite his old clearness of perception, he was more easily tired and he was always thankful to get home.
That home was indeed changed to him now. The cheerfulness and serenity, the evenness of Mrs. Dorriman's temper made him look forward to going home, where his most trifling wishes were attended to, and when he had that _certainty_ of being met in the same quiet way, of having no fluctuations in manner, which gives the real home feeling.
Mrs. Dorriman was not perfect, she was a woman who possessed no great gifts, and she was constitutionally timid, and not much fitted to form an opinion about subjects outside those of domestic interest; but she did understand that a man, tired and worried by affairs outside his home, required rest and refreshment in it, and she knew how to give both.
The dreariness that had once obtained had long vanished. All inside the house was light and bright and cheerful for him now, and each day sent him home with this recognition deeper in his heart, and more remorseful because of certain acts of his which now never could be undone.
Mrs. Wymans, when she made her appearance at Renton, had rehearsed her apology, and then found that it must be put differently.
The extreme quiet of Mrs. Dorriman's manner was a check she had hardly counted upon. When they had that encounter in the railway carriage the poor little lady had been troubled and nervous, her manner was agitated; and Mrs. Wymans, who was a shrewd observer, saw that she stopped the conversation about her brother from a sense of right, and that she was evidently not resenting it in a sisterly fashion.
From this she drew several inferences, everyone of which had to be laid aside now.
"Your brother, I hear, has been so ill we did not like to intrude, and before--you went away----" she said, which was not in the least what she had meant to say.
"Yes," said Mrs. Dorriman, "we went away, and had you been so kind as to call before this I could not have seen you, my brother has been so very ill."
"And you have no nurse?" said Mrs. Wymans, betraying her knowledge of the internal economy of the household. "You must find the nursing very troublesome and most fatiguing. I know of an excellent woman who could come at a moment's notice."
