Carmella Commands
for the sky next week. Well, well, how’s everybody? Hello, Margaret, my dear! Hello, John! How’s the boy?”
His children responded dutifully, though obviously bored. Margaret, who was beginning to feel the influence of the languid pose, had more than once protested at her father’s incurable habit of talking the day’s business at table. He talked business everywhere. He could no more help it than a small boy can help jumping and shouting. It was the boy still in him. His interests were everybody’s.
Pressed for a defense of talking business to his wife at dinner, when Margaret had protested, he had insisted to himself that he did it only that Mrs. Barrington might know his affairs in case—well, in case anything happened; the kind of thing the life insurance advertisements harped on, for example.
He knew in his heart that this was not the real reason; but having thought of it, he let it obsess him until he bragged at the club that if anything happened to him his wife could take over the business on an instant’s notice. And, indeed, he would have been horrified had he known how little real attention Mrs. Barrington was paying to his business chatter. Her mind was concerned with other things. Yet she invariably maintained the appearance of interest.
In contrast to his short-bodied, dynamic vigor, his wife had true Norman figure and poise and reserve. She leaned slightly forward as she talked or ques-
[87]
