“And I think so, too. I _told_ your father that you would not be pleased.”
“Well, of course, it’s come to this, that I’ll give up coming home at all,” and he savagely hacked himself a large slice of cake.
A look of terror crept into the Doña’s eyes—her children vanishing slowly, steadily, over the brow of a hill, while she stood rooted to the ground, was one of her nightmares.
Trying to keep the anger out of her voice, Teresa said, “The last time you were here there were no visitors at all, and the time before it was all your own friends.”
“Poor angel!” cried Concha, plumping down on his knee, “you’re like Harry, who used to say that he’d call his house Yarrow that it might be ‘unvisited.’”
Arnold grinned—the Boswellian possessive grin, automatically produced in every Trinity man when a sally of Dr. Sinclair’s was quoted.
“How I love family quarrels! By the way, where’s Mr. Lane?” said Guy.
“Playing golf,” answered the Doña curtly.
“The glorious life he leads! ‘The apples fall about his head!’ He does lead an amazingly beautiful life.”
“‘_Beautiful_,’ Guy?” and the Doña turned on him the look of pitying wonder his remarks were apt to arouse in her.
“Yes, successful, middle-aged business men,” cried Guy excitedly, beginning to wave his hands up and down, “they’re the only happy people ... they’re like Keats’ Nightingale, ‘no hungry generations tread them down, singing of....’”
“I’m not so sure of that,” laughed Arnold. “We’re certainly hungry, and we often trample on him—if that’s what it means,” and, getting up, he yawned, stretched himself, and, seizing the Doña’s hand, said, “Come and show me the garden.”
The Doña flushed with pleasure, and they strolled off towards the border, whither they were shortly followed by Concha.
“I quite agree with you,” she said presently. “Dad’s life _is_ pleasant to contemplate. Somehow, he belongs to this planet—he manages to be happy.”
“Yes, you see he doesn’t try to pretend that he belongs to a different scheme of evolution from beasts and trees and things, and he doesn’t dream. Do you think he ever thinks of his latter end?” and he gave a little squeak of laughter.
Teresa smiled absently, and for some seconds gazed in silence at the view. Then she said, “Think of all the things happening everywhere ... but there are such gaps that we can’t feel the _process_—even in ourselves; we can only register results and that isn’t living, and it’s frightfully unæsthetic.”