"Glad to. Any chance of you coming to lunch, Rachael? What are
your plans?"
"Thank you, no, woman dear! I may go over to Gertrude's for tea."
The little group broke up. Mrs. Haviland and her niece went out to
the waiting motor car purring on the pebbled drive. Rachael idly
watched them out of sight, sighed at the thought of wasting so
beautiful a day indoors, and went slowly upstairs. Her husband,
comfortably propped in pillows, looked better.
"Clarence," said she, depositing several pounds of morning papers
upon the foot of his bed, "who's Billy lunching with at the club?"
Clarence picked up the uppermost paper, fixed his eyes attentively
upon it, and puffed upon his cigarette for reply.
"Do you know?" Rachael asked vigorously.
No answer. Mr. Breckenridge, his eyes still intent upon what he
was reading, held his cigarette at arm's length over the brass
bowl on the table beside the bed, and dislodged a quarter-inch of
ash with his little finger.
Rachael, briskly setting his cluttered table to rights, gave him
an angry glance that, so far as any effect upon him was concerned,
was thrown away.
"Don't be so rude, Clarence," she said, in annoyance. "Billy said
you agreed to her going to the club for golf. Who's she with?"
At last Mr. Breckenridge raised sodden and redshot eyes to his
wife's face, moistening his dark and swollen lips carefully with
his tongue before he spoke. He was a fat-faced man, who, despite
evidences of dissipation, did not look his more than forty years.
There was no gray in his thin, silky hair, and there still
lingered an air of youth and innocence in his round face. This
morning he was in a bad temper because his whole body was still
upset from the Friday night dinner and drinking party, and in his
soul he knew that he had cut rather a poor figure before Billy,
and that the little minx had taken instant advantage of the
situation.
"I just want to say this, Rachael," Clarence said, with an icy
dignity only slightly impaired by the lingering influences of
drink. "I'm Billy's father, and I understand her, and she
understands me. That's all that's necessary; do you get me?" He
put his cigarette holder back in his mouth, gripped it firmly
between his teeth, and turned again to his paper. "If some of you
damned jealous women who are always running around trying to make
trouble would let her ALONE" he went on sulkily, "I'd be obliged
to you--that's all!"
Rachael settled her ruffles in a big wing-chair with the innocent
expression of a casual caller. She took a book from the reading
table, and fluttered a few pages indifferently.