Tutors' Lane Part 10

He found her knitting by the yellow lamp in the library. "Well, Tommy dear," she said, looking at him with a quizzical smile, "was the picnic a success?"

"Mrs. Norris, you are wonderful. When I think how much I owe to your generation. After all, I think a woman is loveliest at fifty."

"Oh, flatterer!"

"But you know you cannot get that fine _savoir vivre_ before."

"Oh dear me, how much more _savoir vivre_ I'll have when I'm eighty.

What an old charmer I'll be then! Will you come to see me when I'm eighty, Tommy?"

"What a question!"

"Well, I hope you won't take me off on any old wis.h.i.+ng carpet and put me down in a damp, horrid place and give me tonsilitis."

"Who has tonsilitis?"

"Nancy, of course, and you gave it to her, you bad thing."

Tonsilitis! He remembered now the damp rug and also certain sniffles that had required, from time to time on the homeward trip, the administration of a diminutive handkerchief with a pretty "N"

embroidered, he knew, in the corner. So that is the way he would look after her!

"What can I do about it?" It was true that Mrs. Norris was taking it very calmly.

"Do? Why, you can't do anything but wait until she gets over it. You might go and see her when she begins to pick up."

"I caught cold myself." He had at least been true to that extent.

"Are you doing anything for it? Remind me when you go, and I'll give you some Squim. It's something new, and it did wonders for Mary."

"Don't you think it might be nice for me to send Nancy some?" asked Tom, laughing. Tonsilitis was seldom fatal, after all; and what an excellent excuse to visit her it would be when she was getting better!

"Tommy, dear, haven't you something to tell me?"

"No, not really."

"Not anything?"

"Well, hardly anything." He was sitting near her, and now he leaned forward and whispered, "I asked her to be my wife, and she refused." It was not said, however, in the tone one would expect for such an unhappy message. Mrs. Norris looked at him curiously. "She said she couldn't answer me now, but as good as gave me permission to ask her again--and when a girl talks that way, isn't it as good as settled?"

It did look promising, certainly. But then, there was Henry. "What about Henry?" she asked. "How does he feel?"

"What has he to do with it?"

"Oh my, he has a lot to do with it. He's more than just a brother, you know. He's her father and mother."

"And aunt, maiden aunt, as well."

Mrs. Norris laughed. "Henry's to be reckoned with, though, just like Marshal Ney--or was it Cincinnatus? I never can remember."

"But, Mrs. Norris, what am I to do?"

"Why, you must just be very nice and thoughtful to Nancy and as decent as you can be to Henry, and pray the Good Lord will help you."

"Will you pray for me, too?" Tom had played too much baseball not to appreciate the value of organized cheering.

"Yes, I'll pray for you." And then Tom jumped up and planted a thoroughgoing kiss--which was designed for the cheek, but which, upon her turning quickly, was delivered, in a manner that even Leofwin would have applauded--upon her neck.

On the sixth day Nancy sat up for a while during Miss Albers' hour and a half off. There was an abutment at one end of her room which overlooked the Whitman garden and carried the eye on down the hill until it rested on the factory in Whitmanville--the factory which made the garden possible for her. There was a letter in her lap from Tom. It had come with his roses and it asked her to go with him to the boat race. There was also a book in her lap, but she made no effort to read it; it was so much easier just to gaze out of the window and let her mind wander where it would.

Henry knocked and entered. "Well, this is very nice. Do you really feel a lot better?"

"Ever so much, thank you. I think probably I'll get up in a day or two."

"I suppose you'll want your tonsils out now, won't you?" The question of a tonsilectomy had been a moot one for years. Nancy had always been anxious to have them out, having been told that it was merely a case of "snip, snip, and a day on ice cream." Henry, who regarded tonsilectomy skeptically as a fad, and who knew, furthermore, that it was a major operation for adults and that old Mrs. Merton hadn't walked straight since she had had hers out, was strongly opposed. This had, in fact, been an exceedingly sore point with them, and the amount of unhappiness engendered by it was considerably in excess of that which would have resulted from an operation when it was first suggested.

"I'll have to wait, of course, until I get well over this. It isn't like a rheumatism, you know." Nancy had learned the jargon thoroughly.

Well, that subject was now disposed of, and Henry, with the directness of a trained economist, abruptly went into the main object of his call.

There had been certain features about Nancy's delirium which had astonished and annoyed him, and he had come with the express purpose of discussing them should he find Nancy strong enough. He now decided that she was strong enough. "Do you realize that when your fever was high you talked at a great rate?" he asked.

"I vaguely remember mumbling and grumbling."

Henry did not relish his task, but he felt it to be his duty--and Henry had never been one to s.h.i.+rk his duty. "You talked a great deal about this Tom Reynolds," he said.

"Yes?" Nancy was aware that she coloured. She was aware also of a sudden sinking sensation, not dissimilar to the one that comes from a too rapid drop in an elevator. So Henry had come to her at the first possible moment to protest against "this Tom Reynolds." "He has had a bad recitation," she thought, "and now he is going to take it out on me,"

and then she called her brother a hard and inelegant name, as people will when angry with their dearest relatives. Had Nancy been of a satirical nature she might have made something of her brother's adoption of Freudian methods; but she was not, and she knew only direct-fire warfare.

"Nancy," Henry went on, leaning towards her, "surely you are not in love with that man?"

Had Tom been a head hunter with tin cans in his ears, Nancy would have loved him at that moment.

"Yes, I am," she said.

Henry stared at her. It was clear she meant what she said. Then he glanced at the letter and the book that lay in her lap, as people will notice small things at such times. He guessed in whose handwriting the letter was, and--the book was _Sonnets from the Portuguese_! She had even taken to sentimental rubbis.h.!.+

"Oh Nancy, can't you see that he is not worthy of you? Who are his people? Where is he from? I wouldn't give _that_ for his future here.

He's lazy, and he's filled you up on a lot of poetry. Nancy, think well of it before it's too late." She was gazing out the window, hardly hearing him. She had confessed aloud, before Henry, that she loved Tom.

Henry was going on. "If you won't think of yourself, perhaps you can think of Henry Third? What is to become of him if you go?"

Nancy turned to look at him. She felt giddy now, and she thought she was going to cry. It would not do, however, to make a scene, when up to this point she had acquitted herself so well. "You mean that I should give up my life to look after your son?"

"Please don't be melodramatic. We know one another so well it isn't necessary. I am not asking you to give up your life. I am asking you not to throw it away, and in the meantime you have certain definite obligations here. You are more than an aunt to Henry. Life here with him will be far better for you than being the wife of that uncertain boy."

She allowed it to pa.s.s, but it gave the final flick to her anger. "You are the kind of person, Henry, who is so monumentally selfish that you think everybody who dares to cross you in any way is himself monumentally selfish too. Now you come to me in a protective role to save me from 'this Tom Reynolds' with a ma.s.s of ill-natured slander--and lies--because if I go to him you will have to get a new housekeeper."

"Nancy--"