“I am afraid I said something about not coming to a house where you weren’t welcome.”

“I know you said something about a bribe.”

At this Adelaide laughed out loud.

“I believe I did,” she said.  “What things one does say sometimes!  There’s dinner.”  She rose, and tucked her hand under his arm.  “Will you take me in to dinner, Pete, or do you think I’m too despicable to be fed?”

The truth was that they were all four in such high spirits that they could no more help playing together than four colts could help playing in a grass field.  Besides, Vincent had taunted Adelaide with her inability ever to make it up with Wayne.  She left no trick unturned.

“I don’t know,” she went on as they sat down at table, “that a marriage is quite legal unless you hate your mother-in-law.  I ought to give you some opportunity to go home and say to Mrs. Wayne, ’But I’m afraid I shall never be able to get on with Mrs. Farron.’”

“Oh, he’s said that already,” remarked Vincent.

“Many a time,” said Pete.

Mathilde glanced a little fearfully at her mother.  The talk seemed to her amusing, but dangerous.

“Well, then, shall we have a feud, Pete?” said Adelaide in a glass-of-wine-with-you-sir tone.  “A good feud in a family can be made very amusing.”

“It would be all right for us, of course,” said Pete, “but it would be rather hard on Mathilde.”

“Mathilde is a better fighter than either of you,” put in Vincent.  “Adelaide has no continuity of purpose, and you, Pete, are wretchedly kind-hearted; but Mathilde would go into it to the death.”

“Oh, I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Farron,” exclaimed Mathilde, tremendously flattered, and hoping he would go on.  “I don’t like to fight.”

“Neither did Stonewall Jackson, I believe, until they fixed bayonets.”

Mathilde, dropping her eyes, saw Pete’s hand lying on the table.  It was stubby, and she loved it the better for being so; it was firm and boyish and exactly like Pete.  Looking up, she caught her mother’s eye, and they both remembered.  For an instant indecision flickered in Adelaide’s look, but she lacked the complete courage to add that to the list—­to tell any human being that she had said his hands were stubby; and so her eyes fell before her daughter’s.

As dinner went on the adjustment between the four became more nearly perfect; the gaiety, directed by Adelaide, lost all sting.  But even as she talked to Pete she was only dimly aware of his existence.  Her audience was her husband.  She was playing for his praise and admiration, and before soup was over she knew she had it; she knew better than words could tell her that he thought her the most desirable woman in the world.  Fortified by that knowledge, the pacification of a cross boy seemed to Adelaide an inconsiderable task.

By the time they rose from table it was accomplished.  As they went into the drawing-room Adelaide was thinking that young men were really rather geese, but, then, one wouldn’t have them different if one could.