rich enough, now, so that
his wild-eyed way of practising law won't matter."
"All very nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of
Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to
without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch
again. "By the way, didn't you say he was coming early?"
She nodded. "That's what he told me this morning when I telephoned him
to remind him that it was to-night. He said he had something he wanted
to talk to me about. I knew I shouldn't have a minute, but I didn't say
so because I thought if he tried to get here early, he might miss being
late."
They heard, just then, faint and far-away, the ring of the door-bell, at
which she cried, "Oh, dear! There's some one already."
"Wait a second," he said. "Let's see if it's him."
The paneled walls and ceiling of their hall were very efficient
sounding-boards and there was no mistaking the voice they heard speaking
the moment the door opened--a voice with a crisp ring to it that sounded
always younger than his years. What he said didn't matter, just a
cheerful greeting to the butler. But what they heard the butler say to
him was disconcerting.
"You're terribly wet, sir."
Frederica turned on her husband a look of despair.
"He didn't come in a taxi! He's walked or something, through that rain!
Do run down and see what he's like. And if he's very bad, send him up to
me. I can imagine how he'll look."
She was mistaken about that though. For once Frederica had overestimated
her powers, stimulated though they were by the way she heard her husband
say, "Good lord!" when the sight of his brother-in-law burst on him.
"Praise heaven you can wear my clothes," she heard him add. "Run along
up-stairs and break yourself gently to Freddy."
She heard him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then
in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the
water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in
irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down
almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a
liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat.
Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to
accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books,
now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently
outward. A melancholy pool had alre
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