“I doubt it,” she told him, with light readiness--“for I don't see myself what I mean. I forget indeed what it was I said. And so you think you'll go up to town tonight?”
A sudden comprehension of what was slipping away from his grasp aroused him. “No--no,” he urged her, “don't forget what it was you said! I wish you'd talk more with me about that. It was what I wanted to hear. You never tell me what you're really thinking about.” She received the reproach with a mildly incredulous smile in her eyes. “Yes--I know--who was it used to scold me about that? Oh”--she seemed suddenly reminded of something--“I was forgetting to mention it. I have a letter from Celia Madden. She is back in England; she is coming to us Saturday, too.”
He put out his lips a trifle. “That's all right,” he objected, “but what has it got to do with what we were talking about?”
“Talking about?” she queried, with a momentarily blank countenance. “Oh, she used to bully me about my deceit, and treachery, and similar crimes. But I shall be immensely glad to see her. I always fight with her, but I think I like her better than any other woman alive.”
“I like her too,” Thorpe was impelled to say, with a kind of solemnity. “She reminds me of some of the happiest hours in my life.”
His wife, after a brief glance into his face, laughed pleasantly, if with a trace of flippancy. “You say nice things,” she observed, slightly inclining her head. “But now that Celia is coming, it would be as well to have another man. It's such dreadfully short notice, though.”
“I daresay your father could come, all right,” Thorpe suggested. “I'd rather have him than almost anyone else. Would you mind asking him--or shall I?”
An abrupt silence marked this introduction of a subject upon which the couple had differed openly. Thorpe, through processes unaccountable to himself, had passed from a vivid dislike of General Kervick to a habit of mind in which he thoroughly enjoyed having him about. The General had been twice to High Thorpe, and on each occasion had so prolonged his stay that, in retrospect, the period of his absence seemed inconsiderable. The master now, thinking upon it in this minute of silence, was conscious of having missed him greatly. He would not have been bored to the extremity of threatening to go to London, if Kervick had been here. The General was a gentleman, and yet had the flexible adaptability of a retainer; he had been trained in discipline, and hence knew how to defer without becoming fulsome or familiar; he was a man of the world and knew an unlimited number of racy stories, and even if he repeated some of them unduly, they were better than no stories at all. And then, there was his matchless, unfailing patience in playing chess or backgammon or draughts or bezique, whatever he perceived that the master desired.