She was carrying
pink, gauzy favours and a spear of flowers. Undeniably in her voice
there was pleasure. Her glance was startled but already complacent. She
paused on the steps, a lovely figure.

But one would say that nothing but the truth dwelt in Bobby.

"Oh, hullo," said he. "No. I came to see your father."

He marched by her. His hair stuck up at the back. His coat was hunched
about his shoulders. His insufficient nose, abundant, loose-lipped mouth
and brown eyes were completely expressionless. He marched by her without
a glance.

She flushed with vexation. Mr. Deacon, as one would expect, laughed
loudly, took the situation in his elephantine grasp and pawed at it.

"Mamma! Mamma! What do you s'pose? Di thought she had a beau----"

"Oh, papa!" said Di. "Why, I just hate Bobby Larkin and the whole
_school_ knows it."

Mr. Deacon returned to the dining-room, humming in his throat. He
entered upon a pretty scene.

His Ina was darning. Four minutes of grace remaining to the child
Monona, she was spinning on one toe with some Bacchanalian idea of
making the most of the present. Di dominated, her ruffles, her blue
hose, her bracelet, her ring.

"Oh, and mamma," she said, "the sweetest party and the dearest supper
and the darlingest decorations and the gorgeousest----"

"Grammar, grammar," spoke Dwight Herbert Deacon. He was not sure what he
meant, but the good fellow felt some violence done somewhere or other.

"Well," said Di positively, "they _were_. Papa, see my favour."

She showed him a sugar dove, and he clucked at it.

Ina glanced at them fondly, her face assuming its loveliest light. She
was often ridiculous, but always she was the happy wife and mother, and
her role reduced her individual absurdities at least to its own.

The door to the bedroom now opened and Mrs. Bett appeared.

"Well, mother!" cried Herbert, the "well" curving like an arm, the
"mother" descending like a brisk slap. "Hungry _now?_"

Mrs. Bett was hungry now. She had emerged intending to pass through the
room without speaking and find food in the pantry. By obscure processes
her son-in-law's tone inhibited all this.

"No," she said. "I'm not hungry."

Now that she was there, she seemed uncertain what to do. She looked from
one to another a bit hopelessly, somehow foiled in her dignity. She
brushed at her skirt, the veins of her long, wrinkled hands catching an
intenser blue from the dark cloth. She put her hair behind her